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Eggs, Curried

A curry of hard‑boiled eggs served with rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Eggs, Curried

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the rice according to your preferred method.

  2. Shell the hard-boiled eggs and cut them into quarters.

Make the curry

  1. In a skillet, heat the butter and lightly fry the chopped onion.

  2. Sprinkle in the flour and curry powder, cooking slowly for 5 to 6 minutes.

  3. Add the stock or milk, season with salt and lemon juice, and simmer gently for 1 hour.

  4. Add the eggs and heat through before serving.

Serve

  1. Serve the curry with the rice arranged as a border or separately.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Lemon + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Hard-boiled eggs
Provide the main protein and body of the dish, holding their shape in the sauce.
Butter
Carries the curry powder's aroma and softens the onion before the sauce is built.
Curry powder
Supplies the spiced aroma and flavour that define the dish, bloomed in fat.
Flour
Thickens the stock or milk into a smooth, lightly bodied sauce.
Stock or milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, adding savoury or creamy richness.
Onion
Adds sweetness and savoury depth as it softens in the butter.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour and curry powder. Cooking the flour with the fat and spices for several minutes removes its raw taste and helps the curry powder bloom. Stirring slowly prevents scorching and lumps when the liquid is added.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, milk, butter, flour, lemon, rice):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, milk, butter, flour, lemon, rice. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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