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Pigeons, Curry Of
Cut one or two pigeons into quarters, and fry them in butter until they are nicely browned. Take them up, drain them, and put them aside until wanted. Peel and slice three large onions, and fry them in the same butter. Put with them half a dozen chopped mushrooms and half a pint of strong veal stock. Stir them together, add a large tea-spoonful of curry-paste and a salt-spoonful of curry-powder, and boil all together until the onions, etc., are quite soft, then rub the whole through a fine hair sieve. Add a dessert-spoonful of brown thickening, and boil the sauce until it is of the consistency of custard. Draw it to the side of the fire, let it cool a minute, then put in the pieces of pigeon, and let them heat in the hot sauce, without boiling. Pour the whole upon a hot dish, and serve with a border of rice round the curry. By many persons a cupful of thick cream will be considered a great improvement to this dish. A sour apple also may be minced and fried with the onions. When brown thickening is not at hand, a dessert-spoonful of ground rice may be mixed smoothly with a little of the sauce, and stirred into the rest. Brown thickening is, however, so useful that it ought to be at hand in every kitchen. (See GRAVY, BROWN ROUX FOR). Time, half an hour to heat the pigeons in the sauce. Probable cost, 2s. 6d., exclusive of the cream. Sufficient for two or three persons.
A Victorian curry in the English manner: the sauce is built, sieved and enriched separately, and the meat only warms through in it. The hinge is that the sauce must be hot enough to cook the pigeon but never allowed to boil, or the birds toughen and the roux-thickened sauce breaks.
- The birdsFarmed squab (about 12–16 oz each, dressed) is the closest thing to the young pigeons meant here. Wood pigeon breasts work but are leaner and darker; frying and a brief warming suits them, while an older bird needs long braising and will stay tough in this treatment.
- Half an hour "to heat"Half an hour of gentle heat in near-simmering sauce is enough to bring quartered squab through, but check the thickest part reaches 165F. Keep the pan at the edge of the heat, uncovered, and do not let it break into a boil at any point.
- MeasuresHalf a pint imperial is 10 fl oz, so a scant 1¼ US cups of stock. A dessert-spoonful is about 2 teaspoons; a salt-spoonful is roughly ¼ teaspoon. "A large tea-spoonful" of curry paste means a generous, heaped one.
- Brown thickeningThis is the book's brown roux, flour cooked in butter to a nut colour and kept in a jar. Two teaspoons of it will barely thicken 10 fl oz; expect to reduce the sauce as well to reach the "consistency of custard," meaning pouring custard, thick enough to coat a spoon.
- Curry paste and powderCommercial curry pastes of the period were generally bottled, oily and fairly salty compounds, often with tamarind and vinegar. A commercial Madras curry paste is a reasonable modern stand-in; taste before adding the extra powder, as modern blends tend to be stronger than the paler, turmeric-heavy powders sold at the time.
- The hair sieveA fine-mesh strainer with the back of a ladle does the work, or blitz the onion-mushroom base smooth and strain it. Passing it is not optional if you want the glossy, seamless sauce the recipe describes.
- Stock"Strong veal stock" means a well-reduced, gelatinous stock. Unsalted chicken stock reduced by a third gives similar body; the gelatine is what makes so little roux behave.
- Cream and appleBoth optional additions are worth taking. Stir the cream in off the heat at the end, after the sauce has finished reducing, and fry the minced sour apple with the onions so it collapses into the purée.
- ServingTwo or three portions, as stated. The rice border was traditionally plain boiled long-grain, pressed round the edge of a hot dish; a mound alongside serves the same purpose.
English curries of this stamp — meat browned, a sieved onion-and-stock sauce, bottled curry paste, a border of rice — are the standard form in late Victorian household cookery, several generations removed from the Indian dishes that inspired them and closer in method to a French velouté or brown sauce. Cassell's places it in a book that assumes brown thickening sits ready in a jar and that pigeons are cheap, and it is costed at 2s. 6d. for two or three people. The meat is warmed in the sauce rather than simmered in it — the habit of the reheated "made dish" that curry powder was so often enlisted to flavour.