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Crab, Curried
Pound a clove of garlic in a mortar, with the white part of half a small cocoa-nut, a table-spoonful of curry-powder, a salt-spoonful of salt, and a piece of butter about the size of a walnut. When these are beaten to a paste, mix them very smoothly over a gentle fire with a quarter of a pound of fresh butter, taking especial care that the saucepan is delicately clean. Add the meat contained in a good-sized crab, and gradually a small cupful of cream. A pound of French beans, cut into thin strips and simmered with the crab, is an improvement to this dish. Just before serving, squeeze over it the juice of a lemon. Serve as usual with rice round the dish. Lobster may be used instead of crab. Time, to simmer, ten minutes. Probable cost, 2s. Sufficient for five or six persons.
A gentle Anglo-Indian curry that depends entirely on restraint at the stove: the crab is already cooked, and the cream must not boil.
- The hingeThe recipe simmers the crab with the beans for the full ten minutes, but the crab is already cooked. If you prefer it not to go stringy and watery, add the picked meat towards the end and let it warm through for two or three minutes over the lowest heat.
- Cream and lemonKeep the pan below a simmer once the cream is in, and add the lemon juice off the heat immediately before serving. Acid plus boiling cream will curdle the sauce.
- The coconut"The white part of half a small cocoa-nut" is fresh coconut flesh, not desiccated shreds or canned milk: roughly 4 to 5 oz, grated. Unsweetened desiccated coconut soaked in a little warm cream for twenty minutes is the nearest substitute.
- ButterA quarter pound of fresh butter plus a walnut-sized piece in the paste is about 4 1/2 oz for five or six people. Half that is plenty; the crab and coconut carry the richness.
- Salt-spoonfulA Victorian salt-spoon holds about 1/4 teaspoon. Season again at the end, since crab meat varies in saltiness.
- Crab yieldA "good-sized crab" gives roughly 8 to 12 oz of picked white and brown meat. Buying about that much picked crabmeat, brown included, matches the intent.
- French beansGreen beans, cut into thin strips as directed. The recipe simmers them with the crab for the full ten minutes.
- Curry-powderVictorian commercial curry powders were generally milder and more turmeric-heavy than modern hot blends, though they varied. A tablespoon of a modern hot blend may overwhelm crab; use a mild Madras-style powder, and toast the paste briefly in the butter to lose the raw spice edge.
- Serving"Rice round the dish" means a border of plain boiled rice with the curry spooned into the centre. Serves five or six as written, four as a main course.
Cassell's places this among many curries that entered British cookery through the East India Company and the returning Anglo-Indian household, by which time curry powder sold ready-mixed was widely available in Britain. The method here, though, keeps the older shape: garlic, fresh coconut and spice pounded together in a mortar into a wet paste, which is how coastal crab curries are still built in Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka, and quite unlike the flour-thickened "curry sauce" of later English cooking. Crab and lobster curries appear in nineteenth-century British books, their sweetness suiting the mild, coconut-heavy style. The "probable cost, 2s" is one of the costings Cassell's supplied throughout, of use to a mistress checking a cook's marketing, and the instruction that the saucepan be "delicately clean" reflects how readily stale fat or scorched milk in a pan would taint a delicate sauce.