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Curried Eggs

Hard-boiled eggs simmered in a curry sauce of butter, onions, curry powder, broth, cream, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Curried Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eggs

  1. Boil the eggs until hard, then let them cool.

Make the curry sauce

  1. In a saucepan, mix the butter and curry powder over moderate heat for a few minutes.

  2. Add the minced onions and fry gently until soft.

  3. Gradually pour in the broth or gravy and simmer until reduced to pulp.

  4. Mix the cream with the flour and stir into the curry, simmering until the raw taste is gone.

Finish and serve

  1. Slice the eggs into half-inch pieces and heat them in the sauce without boiling.

  2. Serve hot.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + wheattop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,002 recipes

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

  3. Onion + wheattop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together858 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  4. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 and absorb the curry sauce's flavour.
Curry powder
Provides the spiced, aromatic flavour that defines the dish.
Butter
Carries the curry powder's fat-soluble flavours and enriches the sauce.
Onions
Add sweetness and body as they soften into the sauce.
Broth or gravy
Forms the liquid base that the sauce reduces into.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, mellow texture to the sauce.

The step that matters

Simmering the cream and flour until the raw taste is gone. Flour thickens the sauce only when heated long enough, and undercooked flour leaves a raw, pasty taste. Keep the sauce simmering gently and stir so it does not scorch or lump.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, cream, wheat. 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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