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Hard‑boiled eggs simmered in a curry‑spiced sauce with cream and arrowroot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter 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 ↓

To Curry Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Fry the onion in butter until golden brown.

  2. Add the curry powder and stock, then simmer until the onion is tender.

  3. Thicken the cream with a little arrowroot, stir it in, and let simmer for a few minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Cut the hard-boiled eggs in halves and add them to the sauce, heating gently without boiling.

  2. Arrange the eggs on a dish with the sauce poured over them.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Onion + arrowroottop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together340 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

Onion and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,827 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, set firm when hard-boiled and held in the sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, mellow body to the sauce.
Arrowroot
Thickens the cream so the sauce coats the eggs instead of running thin.
Onion
Browns in butter to build a sweet, savoury base for the sauce.
Curry powder
Supplies the spiced aroma and flavour that defines the dish.

The step that matters

Heat the eggs gently without boiling. Boiling the sauce can toughen egg whites and make the thickened cream separate or turn grainy, so the eggs should be warmed slowly.

Swap the arrowroot

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Arrowrootthe original

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