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Curried Eggs

Hard‑boiled eggs served in a spiced curry sauce with onions, ginger, and chutney.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Lime and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,621 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Curried Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Shell and halve the hard-boiled eggs.

  2. Slice the onions and fry them in hot butter until crisp.

  3. In an enamel bowl, combine the fried onions, curry powder, pepper, salt, chutney or jam, lime juice, and ginger.

Make the sauce

  1. Add flour, milk, and water to the mixture. If using coconut, omit the flour.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the eggs in a fireproof dish.

  2. Serve with rice or vermicelli.

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. Lime + gingertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,621 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pepper + limetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,491 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  4. Pepper + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,800 recipes

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

  5. Onion + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,595 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Hard-boiled eggs
Form the main body of the dish, holding the sauce.
Onions
Add sweetness and savoury depth as they fry until crisp.
Flour
Thickens the sauce so it clings to the eggs.
Curry powder
Provides the main spice flavour and aroma.
Chutney or jam
Adds sweetness and fruity body to balance the spices.
Lime juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Bring the mixture to a boil. Flour must be heated long enough to cook fully and thicken the sauce. Boiling activates the starch in the flour, so the sauce thickens and loses any raw, pasty taste. Stir to prevent scorching on the base of the pan.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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