Skip to main content
Main

Curried Eggs

A curry sauce with hard‑boiled eggs served over or beside cooked rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Curried Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and dry the rice, then cook until tender.

  2. Shell the eggs and cut them into quarters.

Make the curry

  1. Fry the onion in hot butter until slightly softened.

  2. Sprinkle in the flour and curry powder.

  3. Cook slowly for about 6-8 minutes.

  4. Add the stock or milk, season with salt and lemon juice, and simmer gently for about 15 minutes.

  5. Add the eggs and heat through before serving.

Serve

  1. Arrange the rice as a border or serve 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

Curry powder
Provides the main spiced flavour and aroma of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the butter and onion mixture so the sauce becomes smooth and coats the eggs.
Butter
Carries the onion and spices, adding richness and helping them cook without sticking.
Stock or milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and carries the flavour through it.
Hard-boiled eggs
Supply the main protein and soft texture that the sauce surrounds.

The step that matters

Cook the curry powder and flour slowly. Cooking spices and flour gently in fat before adding liquid toasts the spices and cooks out raw flour taste. Rushing this step leaves the sauce tasting raw and floury, and the flour may lump when 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.

More egg curry recipes

Mutton 9Hard 5 See all 28 →

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesRice FrittersRice Fritters84 recipesSteamed RiceSteamed Rice48 recipesRice Griddle CakesRice Griddle Cakes28 recipes