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Jersey Milk Curry
Take the remains of any kind of white boiled fish, remove the bones and skin, and cut the flesh into neat slices, dredge a little flour over them, and fry them in a little butter, with two shallots, finely minced, supposing there are two pounds of fish. Dredge a table-spoonful of curry-powder over them, and put them on a hot plate in the oven until required. Melt two ounces of butter over the fire, and mix smoothly with it two table-spoonfuls of flour. Add a small tea-spoonful of salt, half a tea-spoonful of mixed spice, and as much milk as will make it of the consistency of thick cream. Let it boil gently for a few minutes, then put in the slices of fish, and let them remain for half an hour. Just before serving, squeeze the juice of half a lemon over them. Probable cost, exclusive of the cold fish, 6d. Sufficient for three or four persons.
A Victorian re-heat dish built on leftover boiled fish, closer to a mild creamed curry than anything from the subcontinent. The whole thing hangs on not cooking the fish twice.
- The half hour is the trapAlready-cooked fish held in hot sauce for thirty minutes will collapse into threads. Bring the sauce to the boil, take it off the heat, fold in the fish, and give it five to ten minutes covered on the lowest possible setting — just long enough to heat through.
- "White boiled fish"Cod, haddock, hake, pollock or halibut — any firm, lean, non-oily white fish. Two pounds of cooked flesh is a generous amount; it is roughly what you get from 2 1/2 to 3 lb of raw fillet.
- Mixed spiceA British sweet-baking blend: cinnamon, coriander, nutmeg, allspice, ginger, sometimes clove. Still sold as "mixed spice" in the UK; elsewhere use pumpkin-pie spice or make your own. Half a teaspoon in a pint of sauce is a background note, not a flavour.
- Curry powderThe Victorian commercial article was generally coriander- and turmeric-heavy, and often milder than modern blends, though pungency varied a good deal by maker. A single tablespoon over two pounds of fish is restrained by modern taste -- a heaped tablespoon of a mild powder is closer to what the dish wants. Dredging it onto the frying fish is deliberate: the spice needs fat and heat to lose its raw, dusty edge.
- Milk quantityThe recipe gives none; it asks only for as much milk as will bring the sauce to the consistency of thick cream. Two ounces of butter with two tablespoons of flour will carry up to about a pint (2 cups), but for a genuinely thick-cream body you will want less -- start with 1 1/2 cups and add more only if it stiffens too far. Whole milk, given the title.
- "Hot plate in the oven"The lowest warming setting your oven offers. Cover the fish loosely with foil so the edges do not dry out while the sauce is made.
- ShallotsTwo shallots, finely minced, need three or four minutes in the butter before the fish goes in — the recipe implies they cook alongside, but raw shallot in the finished sauce is harsh.
- ServingSufficient for three or four, as stated, with plain boiled rice. The lemon goes in off the heat and at the last moment; acid added to a hot milk sauce and then boiled will curdle it.
- CostSixpence in pre-decimal money, exclusive of the fish — the point of the recipe being that the fish was already paid for.
Curry powder had been a British grocery staple for a century by the time Cassell's appeared, and dishes like this one show what happened to it in the English household kitchen: it became a way of dressing up leftovers. Fish was boiled plain for one meal and returned the next day in a spiced white sauce, a habit shared with kedgeree and fish pie. The "Jersey milk" of the title is the selling point — notably high in butterfat, and so richer than ordinary milk. That the dish carries both curry powder and English mixed spice, the latter a pudding and cake seasoning, is a fair measure of how loosely the word "curry" was used in the period: it signalled a warm yellow sauce rather than any particular tradition.