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Fish Curry
Cut cod, haddock, sole, or salmon into neat fillets. If salted for a few hours the fish will be better and firmer. Drain, dry, and fry the fillets for five minutes. Fry also in butter two onions and a shallot cut small. When tender rub them through a sieve, mix with the pulp a table-spoonful of curry paste, a tea-spoonful of ground rice, and as much stock as is required. Boil the sauce till thick, put in the fish, and simmer it till done enough. When ready to serve, throw in a table-spoonful of lemon-juice, and send to table with rice as an accompaniment. Probable cost, exclusive of fish, 6d.
A late-Victorian Anglo-Indian fish curry: fillets are firmed by salting, briefly fried, then finished in an onion-thickened curry sauce. The whole thing works if the fish spends as little time as possible in the pan.
- Don't overcook the fishThe fillets are already fried five minutes before they go into the sauce. "Simmer till done enough" means three or four minutes more at a bare tremble for cod or haddock, and barely two for sole or a thin salmon fillet. Anything longer and the flakes break up into the sauce.
- The salting stepThe recipe salts the fish for a few hours to draw out water and firm the flesh, which helps the fillets survive two cookings. About a teaspoon of salt per pound is enough; drain and dry thoroughly as the recipe directs, and season the finished sauce lightly to compensate.
- Curry pasteVictorian curry paste was typically an oil-and-spice preparation, often bought bottled and closer to a modern jarred Madras paste than to Thai curry paste, though cookbooks of the period also give recipes for making it at home. A tablespoon is modest for the quantity here — taste and add more, and fry the paste briefly with the onion pulp to cook out its raw edge.
- Ground riceEssentially finely ground rice, a little coarser than rice flour and interchangeable with it here; sold in supermarkets and Asian grocers. It thickens without the floury taste of a roux. A teaspoon is a very light thickening; the sieved onions do most of the work.
- Sieving the onionsTwo onions and a shallot fried soft then pushed through a sieve gives a smooth, sweet base. A stick blender does the same job in seconds, though the sieve catches any stringy bits the blender misses.
- Stock quantityThe original leaves this open. Around 300 ml (a generous cup) of fish or light chicken stock gives a sauce that coats the fillets; add it gradually and stop when it looks right, since the onion pulp varies.
- Cost note"6d." is sixpence in pre-decimal currency, and the recipe states the figure is exclusive of the fish, so it covers the sauce ingredients only.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield; the quantities suggest roughly four servings with plain boiled rice. Add the lemon juice off the heat at the last moment, as the recipe directs; boiled into the sauce it turns flat and slightly bitter.
Curry entered the standard English cookbook in the eighteenth century and by the time Cassell's New Dictionary of Cookery was compiled — the original Dictionary of Cookery dates from the 1870s, and the revision is usually placed around 1910 — it was thoroughly domesticated: built on bottled curry paste or powder from firms trading on the Indian connection rather than on freshly ground spice. A fish curry of this kind is a British construction rather than a transplanted Indian dish: the onions are sieved to a smooth sauce, the thickening is ground rice, and the fish is cod or haddock off an English fishmonger's slab. The instruction to salt the fillets first is in line with long-standing practice, the recipe saying only that salting makes the fish better and firmer. Rice is served "as an accompaniment" — alongside rather than beneath.