Cut boiled potatoes into thin slices; then fry 1 chopped onion in 2 tablespoonfuls of butter. Add 3 ounces of grated cocoanut, 1 teaspoonful of curry-powder and 1 cup of milk, salt and cayenne pepper to taste. Let boil up. Add the sliced potatoes and a sprig of parsley chopped. Let simmer a few minutes and serve hot.
A simple potato curry built on a coconut-milk sauce made from grated coconut steeped in dairy milk. A few of the quantities are vague by modern standards, and the curry powder needs different handling than the original implies.
- Quantities and yieldNo potato quantity is given; about 1.5 lb of boiled waxy potatoes suits the sauce as written. That serves four as a side dish.
- Cook the curry powderCommercial curry powder is raw ground spice and tastes dusty if it only boils in liquid. Add it to the onion and butter and fry for 30-60 seconds before the coconut and milk go in.
- The coconutThree ounces of grated coconut means fresh or unsweetened desiccated coconut, never the sweetened flakes sold for baking. Simmered in the milk it thickens the sauce and gives it body; if you want a smoother result, steep it in the hot milk for ten minutes and strain.
- Or use coconut milkSubstituting a cup of canned coconut milk for the dairy milk plus grated coconut gives a closer approximation of what an Indian kitchen would have used.
- Don't let it boil hard"Let boil up" means bring it just to the boil. Milk-based sauces with coconut in them catch and scorch on the bottom of the pan quickly, so keep the heat moderate and stir.
- Potatoes go in last for a reasonThey are already cooked, so they need only two or three minutes to heat through and take up the sauce. Longer and the slices break down into mash.
- CayenneThe recipe leaves the heat entirely to you, which is the honest approach; a hotter hand with the cayenne will carry the dish further than the teaspoon of curry powder alone.
Commercial curry powder, a British simplification of the fresh spice blends ground daily in Indian kitchens, had been sold in London since the late eighteenth century, and by the time this book appeared it was widely available to American cooks. The recipe's structure — fry onion, then add spice, coconut and liquid, and finish with a cooked vegetable — is a fair skeleton of a South Indian potato dish, even if the dairy milk and the sprig of parsley mark it as filtered through a Western kitchen. Books of this sort offered one dish per day from a different country, selling on the promise of variety.