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FOWL, CURRIED (another way)
Melt two ounces of butter in a saucepan; cut up an onion and fry it in the butter to a light brown. Clean and dry a fowl, and fry it to a nice brown in the hot butter. When done, lift it out; mix two table-spoonfuls of curry-powder with one table-spoonful of flour, and stir it into the butter; let it cook for a few minutes, then add a pint of veal stock, an apple cut up very finely, two ounces of sweet almonds blanched and pounded in a mortar, and some salt. Then put back the fowl, and let all gently simmer for from three-quarters of an hour to an hour. Add the juice of half a lemon, and serve. Probable cost, 3s. to 4s.
A Victorian curry built on browned butter, stock and pounded almonds rather than coconut milk or tomato. The method is sound; the main adjustments are the bird, the stock and the spice.
- The fowlA "fowl" here is a mature boiling hen, tougher and more flavourful than a modern roaster. Use a 4-5 lb chicken jointed into eight pieces, which browns better and cooks evenly; a whole bird simmered in a pint of liquid will not cook uniformly.
- Cook the spice, but brieflyThe hinge is the few minutes when the curry powder and flour fry in the butter. Under-cooked, the powder tastes raw and dusty; more than two or three minutes over moderate heat and the ground spices scorch and turn bitter. Stir constantly and add the stock the moment it smells fragrant.
- Curry powderTwo tablespoons of a Victorian curry powder would have been a fairly assertive amount, and commercial blends of the period tended to be turmeric- and coriander-heavy with only moderate chilli, though they varied from maker to maker. Modern commercial powders vary widely in salt and chilli, so start with one tablespoon and taste before adding more.
- Veal stockRarely sold now. A light chicken stock is the closest substitute; if you want the body veal gives, add a split chicken foot or a knuckle of veal bone to the pot while it simmers.
- AlmondsTwo ounces is a generous third of a cup of whole blanched almonds. A food processor replaces the mortar, but grind them to a coarse paste rather than a flour so they thicken the sauce without turning it grainy.
- The appleA tart cooking apple such as Bramley or Granny Smith. It dissolves into the sauce over the long simmer and supplies the sweet-sour note the lemon juice finishes.
- TimingThree-quarters of an hour to an hour suits an old boiling fowl. Jointed modern chicken is done in 30-35 minutes at a bare simmer; breast pieces can come out at 20 minutes and go back in at the end.
- Yield and servingServes four with plain boiled rice. The lemon goes in off the heat, after the pan is pulled from the burner, so its brightness is not cooked away.
Curry entered British domestic cookery through the East India Company and was thoroughly naturalised by the time Cassell's dictionary was compiled: in the late nineteenth century "curried fowl" was standard middle-class fare, and this recipe calls for bought curry powder rather than spices ground at home. The tell-tale English features include a flour-and-butter roux for thickening and apple for sweetness, techniques borrowed from French sauce-making and from older English "blancmange" style dishes. The costing of three to four shillings is characteristic of the book, which priced dishes so a household could budget; a fowl was a considered purchase, and one bird was expected to feed the table. Cassell's habit of printing several versions of the same dish, marked "another way", reflects its dictionary format: the reader chose the method that matched the stock and store cupboard already to hand.