Curried Eggs
Peel 2 or 3 onions and slice them very thin. Put them in a saucepan with 2 tablespoonfuls of butter, and cook slowly until the onions are tender and a golden yellow, taking care that they do not scorch. Add a tablespoonful of flour and stir until smooth; then add a teaspoonful of curry powder, a quarter of a teaspoonful of ground ginger, half a teaspoonful of salt, and a very little finely minced parsley. Mix all thoroughly, and add a cupful of hot stock or water. Stir until it boils, and stand the saucepan over another pan of hot water to keep hot. Have ready 6 hard-boiled eggs./ Cut them across in slices just thick enough to preserve the shape.
In the centre of a hot platter pile a mound of boiled rice, arrange the slices of eggs around the edge, and pour over the curry sauce. Serve at once
A simple onion-based curry sauce poured over sliced hard-boiled eggs and rice. The sauce is the whole dish, so the slow onion cooking is where the time should go.
- The hinge: cook the onions properlyTwo or three onions sliced thin need 20 to 30 minutes over low heat in the butter to go soft and golden. Rushing this gives a raw, sharp sauce that no amount of curry powder will fix, and scorched onions turn it bitter.
- Bloom the curry powderThe powder goes in after the flour is stirred smooth and cooks in the butter before any liquid is added, which is correct and worth respecting. Give it 30 to 60 seconds of stirring so the spices lose their dusty edge.
- Curry powder has changedCommercial curry powders of this period were generally mild and turmeric-forward, and blends vary a great deal today. Start with the teaspoonful called for, taste the finished sauce, and add more if your blend is gentle.
- Sauce consistencyOne tablespoon of flour to one cup of stock gives a thin, pourable sauce, which is what you want over rice. If it tightens too much while it stands, loosen it with a spoonful more hot stock.
- Keeping it hot"Stand the saucepan over another pan of hot water" is a improvised double boiler: it holds the sauce at serving temperature without reducing or catching. A low burner and an occasional stir does the same job.
- Hard-boiled eggsEleven to twelve minutes for large eggs, then straight into cold water so the yolks stay bright and the shells peel. Slice them across with a wet knife or an egg slicer so the rounds hold together.
- RiceFigure about one cup of raw long-grain rice for three or four servings, and scale up if you are feeding more; cook it plain so the sauce carries the seasoning. It should be dry and separate enough to mound on the platter.
- YieldSix eggs and a cup of sauce serves three or four as a light main course, six as part of a larger meal.
Curried eggs belong to the long tail of Anglo-Indian cookery that entered British and American home kitchens through commercial curry powder in the nineteenth century. Bottled powder made "curry" a sauce technique rather than a cuisine: fry onions, stir in flour and powder, add stock, and pour it over whatever needed using up. Eggs suited that logic well, being cheap, usually on hand, and bland enough to take seasoning. A ring of egg slices around a mound of rice was considered a presentable supper dish.