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Curried Eggs

A dish of boiled eggs served in a curry-flavored sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Curried Eggs

Oven, in the book's wordsA very hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Cook the chopped onion in butter for 3 minutes in a frying pan.

  2. Add flour and curry powder, stirring until smooth.

  3. Pour in stock and milk, then add salt and pepper.

  4. Cook for 10 minutes.

Prepare the eggs

  1. Boil the eggs for 30 minutes, then place in cold water and remove the shells.

  2. Quarter the eggs, sprinkle with salt, and place in a saucepan.

Finish and serve

  1. Pour the sauce over them and simmer for 3 minutes.

  2. Serve hot on toast.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Eggs
Form the main body of the dish, setting firmly as they cook in the sauce.
Butter
Carries the onion and spices and adds richness to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the stock and milk into a smooth sauce.
Milk
Adds body and creaminess to the sauce.
Curry powder
Provides the warm, aromatic spice flavour of the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the flour and curry powder. Stirring the flour into the melted butter and onion until smooth prevents lumps. Cooking the flour briefly removes its raw taste, and the spices bloom in the fat, deepening their aroma before liquid is added.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, milk, pepper, egg. 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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