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Mutton, Curried, Good
Put four ounces of butter into a stewpan, and pound six middle-sized onions in a mortar; add the onions to the butter with an ounce of curry-powder, a tea-spoonful of salt, a dessert-spoonful of flour, and half a pint of cream. Stir until smooth. Fry two pounds of mutton, cut in neat pieces, without bone. Let them be of a light brown colour. Lay the meat in a clean stewpan, and pour the curry mixture over. Simmer until the meat is done. Time, two hours to simmer. Probable cost, 1s. per pound. Sufficient, two pounds for four or five persons.
A cream-based Anglo-Indian curry with no stock and no browning of the spice, so the two points that matter are heat control and moisture. Everything else is straightforward.
- The hinge: keep the cream below a simmerHalf a pint of cream held at a rolling boil for two hours will split and the flour will catch on the base of the pan. Keep it at the barest tremble, lid on, and stir up from the bottom every fifteen minutes.
- Half a pintAn imperial half-pint is 10 fl oz, about 1¼ US cups. For 2 lb of meat that is not much liquid over two hours; add water or light stock as it reduces so the meat stays about half covered.
- WeightsFour ounces of butter is about 115 g, one US stick. An ounce of curry powder is roughly four to five level tablespoons — a strong hand by modern habit, and worth tasting toward if your blend is fresh.
- MuttonMutton is sheep past its first year, often two years or more, sold now mainly by specialist butchers. Lamb shoulder is the sensible substitute; it takes the two-hour simmer without going stringy, where leg or loin will dry out.
- Pounded onionsSix medium onions worked to a paste in a mortar is a food processor job today. Purée them, then let them cook down in the butter with the curry powder for several minutes before the flour and cream go in — raw onion paste stirred straight into cream tastes harsh and sulphurous.
- "Stir until smooth"Add the flour to the buttery onions, cook it a minute, then pour the cream in gradually off the heat. Dumping cold cream onto hot flour gives lumps that no amount of simmering will smooth out.
- Fry the meat properly"A light brown colour" is worth taking seriously: dry the cubes, work in batches in a hot pan, and do not crowd them. This is the only browning in the dish.
- ServingTwo pounds feeds four or five as written. Plain long-grain rice and a sharp chutney or lime pickle balance a sauce this rich; there is no acid anywhere in the recipe.
Cassell's belongs to the era when curry had been fully domesticated into British cooking — not an Indian dish so much as an English stew flavoured with a shop-bought blend, thickened with flour and enriched with cream, a treatment that would puzzle a cook in Madras. Commercial curry powders were sold in Britain from the late eighteenth century onward and by the 1870s were a standard grocery item, which may help explain why the recipe names no individual spices at all. Mutton is the default meat here because it was the everyday meat of Victorian Britain, cheaper and more plentiful than beef, and its strong flavour stood up to heavy spicing. The pounding of onions in a mortar to a smooth paste can be read as an Indian technique surviving the translation, and it is what gives the sauce its body.