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Forcemeat Balls, Curry
Pound together bread-crumbs, hard-boiled yolks of eggs, a small quantity of butter, and a seasoning of curry powder and salt. Make into small balls. Time to fry, two or three minutes.
A one-line Victorian formula with no quantities at all, which is normal for this section of Cassell's — the reader was expected to know that forcemeat is a matter of feel rather than measurement. A workable starting point and a few notes on frying follow.
- ProportionsRoughly 1 cup fresh breadcrumbs to 3 hard-boiled yolks and 1 to 1.5 oz softened butter, with 1-2 teaspoons curry powder and salt to taste. Pound to a paste that holds together when squeezed; add butter a little at a time rather than all at once.
- The hinge: bindingThe only things holding these together are cooked yolk and butter, so the mixture must be pounded properly smooth and then chilled firm before shaping. Warm, crumbly balls fall apart the moment they hit the fat. A mortar or a food processor both work; chill 30 minutes after shaping.
- Size"Small balls" is all the recipe says; marble-sized, about 3/4 inch, suits the likely use as a garnish for curry, soup or a made dish rather than a course in itself. On the quantities suggested above that would give roughly 20.
- FryingThe recipe gives a time but no fat temperature or method. Two or three minutes is consistent with deep fat in the 350-375F range: the ingredients are already cooked, so the frying is only to set and colour the outside. Fry in small batches so the fat does not drop in temperature.
- Curry powderVictorian commercial curry powder was typically built on turmeric, coriander and fenugreek; heat varied between blends, though many were milder than a modern madras. Start at the lower end and taste the mixture before shaping.
- BreadcrumbsFresh crumbs from a day-old loaf, not dried or packaged crumbs, which absorb butter differently and give a sandy texture. If the paste seems dry, a teaspoon of cream or stock brings it together.
- ServingForcemeat balls of this kind were commonly used with a curry or a soup such as mulligatawny, or set round a dish of rice. They soften quickly in liquid, so add at the last moment.
Forcemeat — from the French farce, a stuffing — was one of the workhorses of the nineteenth-century English kitchen, a seasoned paste that could be used to stuff a bird, thicken a sauce, or, rolled into balls, garnish almost anything. It is a component rather than a dish, and a curried version would have been useful to a cook once curry powder became a fixture of the British store cupboard. That fixture dates from the East India Company era, when returning officials and their households created a market for ready-mixed "curry powder" sold by British grocers, a stable blend bearing only a loose relation to the freshly ground spice mixtures of the subcontinent. The result is thoroughly Anglo-Indian: an English forcemeat, bound with butter and boiled yolk in the old style, seasoned with a spice blend invented for the English trade.