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Cod, Curried
Put a piece of butter about the size of a large egg into a saucepan, let it melt, then fry in it three pounds of cod cut into pieces about two-inches square, two large onions, and one apple cut into thin slices, a tea-spoonful of thyme, and a bay-leaf. Let them remain until the onions are nicely browned, then add a break-fast-cupful of good stock, a tea-spoonful of curry powder, a tea-spoonful of curry paste, and a tea-spoonful of ground rice mixed smoothly with a little of the stock. Simmer gently for a quarter of an hour, add a small cupful of cream, two pinches of salt, and one of pepper. Put the cod, with the gravy poured over it, on a hot dish, and serve with a bank of rice round the border. Time, three-quarters of an hour. Probable cost of cod, 8d. per pound. Sufficient for five or six persons.
A Victorian Anglo-Indian fish curry, mild by modern standards and built on commercial curry powder and paste. The measurements are British household ones and the fish needs more care than the instructions imply.
- Add the fish lateCod in two-inch pieces will break up if it is fried with the onions and then simmered a further quarter of an hour. Brown the onion, apple and herbs in the butter first, build the sauce, and slip the fish in for the last 8-10 minutes so it just sets and flakes.
- Butter the size of a large eggAbout 2 oz, or 4 tablespoons. Victorian cookbooks used egg-sized, walnut-sized and nut-sized as standard butter measures.
- A breakfast-cupfulRoughly half a pint, so about 10 fl oz British, near enough 1¼ US cups. The "small cupful" of cream that follows is around 5-6 fl oz.
- Ground riceFinely milled rice, closest to what is sold today as rice flour, though traditional ground rice is a slightly coarser grind. It thickens without clouding as heavily as wheat flour and keeps the sauce gluten-free; slake it in cold stock as directed or it will lump.
- Curry paste and powderBoth were bought ready-made from grocers as commercial blends. A teaspoon of each in a dish for six is very mild; taste and increase, and fry the powder briefly in the butter to lose its raw edge.
- Cream and the boilAdd the cream off a hard boil and keep the pan at a bare simmer afterwards. With cream in the pan and some acidity from the apple, brisk boiling risks splitting the sauce.
- The three-quarters of an hourThat is total elapsed time including the browning, not simmering time for the fish. The cod itself wants ten minutes at most.
- ServingA "bank of rice" means the rice piled as a border around the rim of the dish with the curry in the centre. Feeds five or six; allow roughly 8-12 oz of raw long-grain rice.
Curry had been part of English domestic cookery for a century before this recipe, carried home by East India Company families and made easy by commercially blended curry powders and pastes sold by grocers from the late eighteenth century onwards. The result was a distinct Anglo-Indian idiom rather than an Indian one: onion and sliced apple for sweetness, thyme and bay from the English stockpot, a flour or ground-rice thickener, and cream to finish, all of which would be unusual in a subcontinental fish curry. Cod suited it well, being cheap, firm and everywhere on the Victorian fishmonger's slab, and the recipe quotes it at eightpence a pound. The ring of rice around the edge of the platter was a familiar Victorian presentation for dishes served in a sauce.