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Curry Powder
An ounce of ginger, one of mustard, one of pepper, three of coriander seed, three of turmeric, one-half ounce cardamom, quarter ounce cayenne pepper, quarter ounce cumin seed; pound all fine, sift and cork tight.. One tea-spoon of powder is sufficient to season any thing. This is nice for boiled meats and stews. -Mrs. C. Fullington.
A straightforward Anglo-American curry powder, measured entirely by weight, which makes it easy to scale up or down. The proportions are heavy on coriander and turmeric and light on heat, which is typical of the period.
- The weights in cupsAn ounce of ground spice runs roughly 4-5 tablespoons, so the whole batch is about 10 oz, or somewhere between two and a half and three cups of finished powder. Halve or quarter it unless you cook curry constantly; ground spice fades within about six months.
- What "pepper" means hereUnqualified "pepper" in a 19th-century American book is black pepper. Cayenne is listed separately, and at a quarter ounce against ten ounces total the blend is mild by any modern standard.
- Buy some of it groundTurmeric is a dried rhizome that is genuinely hard to pulverize at home; buy it as powder. The same goes for ginger. Coriander, cumin and cardamom are worth grinding yourself, and toasting them dry in a skillet for a minute or two until fragrant, then cooling before grinding, gives far more flavor than the original's straight pounding.
- MustardEither yellow mustard seed ground fine or ready-made mustard powder works. Powdered mustard loses its pungency quickly once blended, another argument for a small batch.
- Sifting mattersThe sieving step is not decorative. Coriander in particular leaves fibrous husk that will not soften in a stew; push the powder through a fine-mesh strainer and discard what stays behind.
- "One tea-spoon is sufficient"That is a light hand for a family-sized pot. Modern palates generally want a tablespoon or more for four to six servings, and the powder is much better bloomed in hot fat at the start of cooking than stirred into liquid at the end, which leaves a raw, dusty taste.
- Storage"Cork tight" means an airtight jar. Keep it dark and cool; turmeric in particular loses color and aroma in a sunny spice rack.
Curry powder in the pre-mixed, shelf-stable form is generally regarded as a British commercial product rather than an Indian one, and is usually traced to the later 18th century, when a single ready-made blend came to stand in for the freshly ground masalas of the subcontinent. By the time Buckeye Cookery was compiled in Ohio in the 1870s, the idea had settled into American home cooking as a shelf-stable seasoning for the sort of plain boiled meats and stews the book is full of -- the recipe itself recommends it for exactly that. Like the mushroom catsups and bottled sauces of the same era, this is a preserved flavoring made in quantity and kept corked for months of use, not a dish. The contributor's name attached to the entry is the house style of the book, which gathered its recipes from named women across the region.