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CARROTS (a I'lndienne)
Braise some young carrots, and let them get cold. Prepare a rich curry sauce as follows. Peel and slice an onion, clean and slice a carrot, fry both in butter till the onion has acquired a light brown colour; then add a table-spoonfuls of curry powder and stir for a few seconds. Next add a small sour apple peeled and chopped, moisten with half a gill of tomato puree, and one gill of Espagnole (brown) sauce, and boil for a few minutes. Season to taste. Having made this sauce, have ready two or three hard-boiled eggs, sliced. Slice the cold carrots, and lay them with the sliced egg in the curry sauce, and allow them to heat gradually. Make a wall or border of boiled rice in a dish, garnish with strips of red and green chillies, and fill up the centre with the carrot and curry mixture. Probable cost, 1s.
A Victorian curry sauce built on the standard British formula of curry powder, onion, apple and brown sauce, used here to dress cold braised carrots and hard-boiled egg. The work is all in the sauce; the carrots should be cooked and chilled in advance.
- GillsAn imperial gill is 5 fl oz, so "half a gill of tomato puree" is about 2.5 fl oz and "one gill of Espagnole" about 5 fl oz. American readers should note the US gill is 4 fl oz. The finished sauce is small — roughly a cup — and is meant to coat, not to drown.
- "A table-spoonfuls"A typesetting slip in the original. One tablespoon of curry powder to this quantity of sauce is about right for period-strength powder; modern blends vary widely in heat, so taste after the sauce has simmered.
- Tomato pureeVictorian tomato purée was a thin sieved pulp, closer to today's passata than to concentrated tomato paste in a tube. Use passata or thinned paste, or the sauce will be leaden.
- EspagnoleA classic brown sauce of browned mirepoix, brown roux and veal stock, reduced. A good reduced beef or veal stock thickened lightly with a brown roux will stand in; a jarred gravy will not, since the sauce carries the whole dish.
- Bloom the powder, brieflyThe instruction to stir the curry powder into the fried onion "for a few seconds" is the hinge. Raw curry powder tastes dusty, but the ground spices scorch and turn bitter in well under a minute over direct heat — add the apple and liquid promptly.
- The sour appleA cooking apple such as Bramley, which collapses into the sauce and supplies the acidity that balances the powder. A sweet eating apple will leave chunks and make the sauce cloying.
- Reheating"Heat gradually" applies particularly to the eggs: hard-boiled whites toughen and turn rubbery if held at a simmer. Warm the assembled mixture gently and serve as soon as it is hot through.
- Chilli garnishThe strips of red and green chilli are decorative, cut fine and laid over the rice border. They are not seasoning for the sauce.
- Yield and costEnough for three or four as a light supper or a vegetable course, given two or three eggs. The "probable cost, 1s" is the book's usual price note and has no reliable modern equivalent.
"À l'indienne" in a late-Victorian English kitchen generally meant curry powder — a British commercial blend rather than any Indian spice practice — worked into a French sauce base. The onion-apple-curry powder combination is the familiar Anglo-Indian curry sauce of the period, and a sauce à l'indienne remains part of the French repertoire, though not always on an Espagnole base. What is striking here is that the dish is meatless: cold braised carrots and hard-boiled egg, reheated in a small quantity of rich sauce and served in a rice border. The rice wall — piped or moulded round the edge of the dish, centre filled at the last moment — was a common Victorian way of making a modest filling look like a composed dish.