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Curried Eggs
1 cupful plain boiled rice I onion I heaping teaspoonful flour 2 teaspoonfuls curry powder 1 teaspoonful salt I heaping tablespoonful (I oz.) butter 1 teaspoonful lemon juice 1/2 pint (I cup) stock or water Chop the onion and fry it for a few minutes in the butter, add the flour, curry powder, salt, lemon juice, and water; allow to cook slowly for fifteen minutes in a casserole.
Add four of the eggs cut in quarters, and garnish with the other two eggs.
Serve in the casserole. 4 eggs
A simple hard-boiled-egg curry in the Anglo-Indian style, thickened with a flour-and-curry-powder roux and served in the dish it cooked in. Nothing here is difficult; the points below sort out the vessel, the egg count and the sauce.
- What "casserole" means hereIn this book the casserole is the flameproof cooking pot itself, used on the stovetop and brought to the table, not a baked dish. A small enamelled cast-iron or heavy earthenware pan that takes direct heat is the right equivalent.
- Egg countThe ingredient list calls for 4 eggs, but the method quarters four into the sauce and garnishes with two more, so six are needed; the list appears to be two short. Hard-boil them ahead: 10-11 minutes for large eggs, then cool in cold water so the yolks stay yellow rather than greying.
- Half a pint of stockThe recipe glosses it as one cup, which is the American half-pint. That is right for a coating sauce over six eggs; if you follow the British half-pint of 10 fl oz you will need a few minutes more reduction.
- Cook the curry powderCommercial curry powder tastes raw and dusty unless it is fried. Let it sizzle in the butter with the onion and flour for a full minute before the liquid goes in - this is the difference between a decent sauce and a floury one.
- Lemon juice timingAdding it at the start, as written, is fine, but the brightness cooks off over fifteen minutes. A second teaspoonful stirred in just before the eggs go down is worth doing.
- Adding the eggsSlide the quartered eggs in at the end and only warm them through, two or three minutes. Simmering hard-boiled eggs in sauce toughens the whites.
- The riceThe cupful of plain boiled rice is not stirred into the sauce; it is the bed the curry sits on or is served alongside. Have it hot and dry.
- YieldEnough for three as a light main dish or four at lunch with bread.
Curried eggs belong to the long British domestication of Indian cookery, in which a bought tin of curry powder, a roux and whatever cold protein was in the larder produced a hot supper dish. Commercial curry powders were sold in Britain from the late eighteenth century onward, and by the time books like this one appeared the formula - fry onion in butter, add flour and powder, moisten with stock, sharpen with lemon - was standard household technique rather than anything regional. The dish also reflects the economics of the egg: cheap, always on hand, and a respectable meatless centrepiece for a Friday or a thin week.