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Beef, Curried
Take two pounds of beef, freed from fat, bone, and gristle, and cut into small pieces. Slice two onions, and put them in a saucepan with four ounces of butter, two cardamoms, one clove of garlic, and one inch of stick cinnamon. Cook over the fire until the onions are quite tender, taking care that they do not brown; then stir in one table-spoonful of curry powder, one table-spoonful of curry paste, the pieces of meat, and salt. Put the lid on, and let it simmer in the oven, or over a very slow fire, for an hour and a half. Add then a squeeze of lemon, and serve with well-boiled rice, separately. Probable cost, 2s. 9d.
A late-Victorian British curry: aromatics bloomed in butter, meat added raw, no added liquid, and a long slow braise. It works, but only if the heat stays low enough that the onions never colour and the pan never boils dry.
- The hinge: no liquid is addedThe onions, butter and the meat's own juices are the entire braising medium, so the pot must be tightly lidded and the heat genuinely gentle. The book gives no oven temperature; use the lowest workable setting, or on the hob the lowest flame with a heat diffuser. Check at 45 minutes and add a splash of water or stock if the base is catching.
- Cut of beef"Two pounds of beef" here most likely means a stewing cut — chuck, shin or blade. Cut into 1-inch pieces rather than the "small pieces" of the original, which risks the meat shredding to nothing over 90 minutes.
- CardamomsTwo whole pods — green on the usual reading — rather than two teaspoons of seed; bruising them is a modern nicety, not in the text. They stay in the pot and are meant to perfume rather than dominate; fish them out before serving if you prefer.
- Curry powder and curry pasteBoth were branded commercial goods in Britain by this date and were understood as different products: the powder dry and spice-led, the paste oily, salted and often containing tamarind or vinegar. A tablespoon of a decent madras powder plus a tablespoon of a jarred curry paste reproduces the intent. If you have only one, use two tablespoons of it and add a teaspoon of tamarind paste with the lemon.
- Four ounces of butterThat is a full stick — half a cup — for two pounds of meat, and it is deliberate: the fat is the sauce. Reducing it to 2 oz gives a drier, less unctuous result, which some cooks will prefer.
- Do not brown the onionsThe instruction is explicit and unusual for a curry. The book wants a pale, sweet base, not a deep browned masala. Keep the heat low and stir; 15-20 minutes is normal.
- Salt and the lemonNo quantity of salt is given — start with a teaspoon and correct at the end, since curry pastes vary enormously in saltiness. The lemon goes in off the heat, just before serving, and matters more than its casual mention suggests.
- Yield and servingProbably four to five, though the recipe gives no yield. "Well-boiled rice, separately" means a separate dish of plain long-grain rice, drained dry and served alongside; serving the rice beside rather than beneath the curry was the usual convention in books of this kind.
- The cost line2s 9d is the book's own ingredient cost for the whole dish, printed as a housekeeping guide. It carries no modern meaning.
Curry entered British domestic cookery through the East India Company and was thoroughly naturalised by the time Cassell's dictionary appeared: commercial curry powders had been sold in London since the late eighteenth century, and by the 1870s both powder and paste were pantry staples that a cook bought rather than ground. This recipe shows the result plainly — whole cardamom and stick cinnamon alongside a shop-bought blend, garlic used a single clove at a time, and a firm instruction not to brown the onions, which quietly separates the dish from the Indian cooking it descends from. The insistence on rice served "separately" is a table convention of the period, curry being treated as an entrée with rice as its accompaniment rather than its bed.