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Curried Eggs

A sauce of onions, curry, stock, and cream served over poached eggs, garnished with fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,662 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Curried Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Make the curry sauce

  1. Fry the finely shredded onions in fat until lightly browned.

  2. Add flour, salt, and curry powder, then gradually stir in the stock.

  3. Stir until the mixture boils, then add the cream.

Serve

  1. Poach the eggs and place them on a hot dish.

  2. Pour the sauce over the eggs and garnish with fried bread.

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. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  2. Onion + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,676 recipes

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

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Onion + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Onion + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,827 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Onions
Soften and sweeten as they brown, forming the flavour base of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth sauce that coats the eggs.
Curry powder
Provides the spiced aroma and flavour that define the dish.
Stock
Forms the liquid body of the sauce once thickened with flour.
Cream
Adds richness and a softer, smoother texture to the sauce.
Eggs
Form the main protein, setting gently when poached and carrying the sauce.

The step that matters

Stir until the mixture boils. Flour needs to reach boiling to fully swell its starch and thicken the stock; cream should be added afterwards so it does not overheat and curdle.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, cream, egg, bread):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, cream, egg, bread. 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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