Home › The Principles of Cookery › Fowl, Veal, or Rabbit Curry
Fowl, Veal, or Rabbit Curry
Cut a fowl or rabbit into neat pieces, and some veal into slices, dredge them with flour, and cover with curry-powder; fry in butter till brown. Sprinkle finely-shredded onion during the frying, and when the meat is half done, and of a pale brown, pour in some white stock, and finish the cooking; add a little lemon-juice, and serve hot.
A late-Victorian curry in the English style: brown the meat in butter with curry powder, moisten with stock, finish in the pan. The original gives no quantities at all, so the working proportions below are the practical part.
- ProportionsFor a 3-4 lb jointed chicken or rabbit, or about 2 lb of veal, figure on 2-3 tablespoons curry powder, 2 tablespoons flour, 2 large onions and roughly 2 cups stock. That serves four.
- White stockVeal or chicken stock made without browning the bones, so it stays pale. Any unsalted chicken stock works; avoid dark beef stock, which fights the lemon and muddies the colour.
- Curry powderA commercial Victorian blend was heavy on turmeric, coriander and fenugreek with modest chilli. Modern "Madras" powder is hotter; a mild curry powder is closer to what the book intends.
- Bloom the powder, do not scorch itThis is the hinge. The flour-and-curry coating goes into hot butter and must colour gently over medium heat, no more. Curry powder burns quickly and turns bitter, and there is nothing later in the recipe to hide it.
- Onions in stagesThe recipe has the shredded onion sprinkled in during the frying rather than at the start, which keeps it from blackening in the spiced butter. Let it soften to translucent before the stock goes in.
- Cooking timesAfter the stock is added, allow about 25-30 minutes at a bare simmer for chicken joints, 35-45 for rabbit, and 40-50 for veal slices. Stop when a knife goes in easily and the meat still holds together.
- ThickeningThe dredging flour will thicken the stock to a light sauce. If it stays thin, simmer uncovered for a few minutes rather than adding more flour, which will taste raw.
- Lemon and saltAdd the lemon juice off the heat, a teaspoon at a time, and salt at the end. Curry powders vary in salt and the stock may already carry some.
- ServingPlain boiled long-grain rice, and the usual Victorian side dishes of chutney and grated coconut if you want the full period table.
By the time Cassell's was compiled, curry had been part of English household cooking for well over a century, and recipes like this one show how thoroughly it had been absorbed into the ordinary repertoire: no whole spices, no ghee, no tamarind, just commercial curry powder, butter, onion, stock and a squeeze of lemon for acidity. Ready-mixed curry powder had been sold in London since the late eighteenth century and was cheap and ubiquitous by the 1890s, which is why the book can treat it as a single ingredient and give no blend. The grouping of fowl, veal and rabbit under one heading is also telling: this is a method for using up whatever cheap white meat the household had, and rabbit in particular was everyday food in Britain rather than a delicacy. What the entry offers is a technique rather than a fixed dish: the meat is interchangeable, and the method is the point.