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Indian Curry
Cut two pounds of undressed meat, sweetbreads, fowls, or rabbits, with a rasher of bacon, into neat pieces or joints. Stew in a quarter of a pound of butter a clove of garlic, and an onion or two chopped, take these up when brown, fry the meat in the same fat, drain it and lay it in a saucepan. Mix three dessert-spoonfuls of curry-powder, a table-spoonful of flour, and a tea-spoonful of salt, in sufficient water to make it into a smooth paste, then add a little more water if required; shake the mixture well in a separate stewpan till it boils. Pour the gravy over the meat, simmer gently till this is tender. Before serving add a table-spoonful of lemon-juice. Serve the rice in a separate dish, the gravy in the dish with the meat. Time, an hour or more to stew.
A late-Victorian house curry: meat browned in butter, a thickened curry gravy poured over, and rice served apart. It works, but two details in the method are worth changing before you start.
- "Undressed meat"This means raw meat, not meat without sauce. Two pounds of boneless lamb shoulder, chicken thigh, or rabbit jointed small is the right quantity, and it will serve four with rice.
- The hinge: cook the curry powderThe recipe slakes the powder with cold water and boils it, which leaves commercial curry powder tasting raw and dusty. Fry the powder and flour in the buttered pan for a minute before adding liquid, then proceed as written.
- Don't throw away the aromaticsThe garlic and onion are browned, lifted out, and never mentioned again; the recipe gives no reason. Chop them and return them to the pan with the gravy; they are the backbone of the sauce.
- Water, not stock, is optionalWater, not stock -- No quantity is given for the liquid. Reckon on about a pint (2 cups) for two pounds of meat, and use stock rather than water; the recipe's only other savour comes from the bacon rasher and the browned aromatics.
- Sweetbreads need separate handlingIf you use them, soak in several changes of cold water, blanch briefly, press, and peel the membrane before cutting. They also cook in twenty minutes, not the hour the recipe allows for stewing meat, so add them late.
- A quarter pound of butterThat is 4 oz / 115 g for two pounds of meat, generous even by the standards of the period. Two ounces browns the meat perfectly well; the sauce will still be rich.
- Timing"An hour or more" suits lamb or rabbit. Chicken thigh is done in 35-40 minutes, and boneless breast in under 15; the stated hour will dry it out.
- Finish off the heatThe recipe already adds the tablespoon of lemon juice before serving; add it once the pan is off the burner so the acid stays bright.
The dish descends from the curries brought back by East India Company families a century earlier, and by the time this book was compiled the shortcut was common: a bought tin of ready-blended "curry-powder" standing in for the fresh grinding of spices that an Indian cook would have done to suit the particular dish. The formula here -- brown the meat, thicken with flour, sharpen with lemon at the end -- is essentially a British stew with spice added, and the instruction to serve the rice in a separate dish reflects the Victorian table, where rice was a plain accompaniment rather than part of the dish. Curry-powder blends of the period typically leaned on turmeric, coriander and fenugreek, which is why so many Victorian curries are described as yellow.