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Rice and Indian Curry
Wash half a pound of Patna rice in two or three waters. Drain it, and throw it into plenty of cold water, bring it slowly to the boil, keeping the saucepan uncovered, and let it boil gently until the grains are tender when pressed between the thumb and finger, but are still quite distinct from one another. The rice will need to boil about a quarter of an hour. Drain and dry it on a sieve before the fire. Take two pounds of uncooked meat of any kind, or of rabbit, chicken, or fish, and cut this up into neat pieces convenient for serving. Slice two large onions, and fry them in butter till they are lightly browned without being at all burnt. Take them up, and fry the meat in the same fat, moving it about to keep it from burning. Mix a dessert-spoonful of curry-paste, a desert-spoonful of curry-powder, and a tea-spoonful of ground rice very smoothly with a cupful of milk. Pour this over the meat, and add half a pint of good stock made from bones, the fried onions, a little salt, and a clove of garlic, if this is liked, but the curry will be more generally acceptable if the garlic is omitted. Stir the sauce till it boils, and simmer all gently together till the meat is tender. The time required will vary with the nature of the meat. Put the pieces of meat on a dish. Lift out the pieces of onion, and stir into the curry the juice of half a lemon. Pour the sauce over the meat, and serve. Send the rice to table on a separate dish. It should be arranged that the curry and the rice shall be done enough at the same time. Time, altogether, about two hours. Sufficient for six or eight persons.
A late-Victorian Anglo-Indian curry, built on commercial curry paste and powder rather than whole spices. The method is sound; the measurements and the seasoning level need translating.
- Dessert-spoonfulAn intermediate British spoon size, roughly two teaspoons or 10 ml. Two of them for two pounds of meat is a very mild curry by present standards — taste the sauce once it has simmered and add more powder if it reads flat.
- Half a pint, a cupfulImperial half-pint is 10 fl oz, about 1¼ US cups of stock. The "cupful" of milk is not a standardised measure here; treat it as about 8 fl oz and expect to loosen the sauce with more stock as it reduces.
- Patna riceA long-grain rice associated with Patna in Bihar, the standard British import of the period. Any long-grain rice stands in. Washing in two or three waters removes surface starch, which helps the grains stay distinct.
- Rice timingA quarter of an hour in plenty of boiling water suits the harder, older rice of the day. Modern long-grain is tender in 10 to 12 minutes; start testing at 10 and drain the moment the grain gives without a chalky core.
- Drying the rice"On a sieve before the fire" means driving off surface moisture in gentle radiant heat. Spread the drained rice on a tray in a 250F oven for five to ten minutes, or return it to the dry hot pan off the heat with a cloth under the lid.
- The milk and the thickenerGround rice is the thickener; a teaspoon of rice flour or cornflour does the same work. Slake it smoothly with the cold milk before it meets the pan, and keep the sauce at a bare simmer — a hard boil will split the milk.
- Cooking times by meatThe recipe deliberately leaves this open. Chicken on the bone takes 30 to 40 minutes, stewing beef or mutton 1½ to 2 hours, rabbit about an hour. Fish should not be simmered at all in this fashion; poach the pieces in the finished sauce for five minutes at the end.
- The onionsFrying them, then lifting them out at the finish, gives flavour without visible pieces. Leaving them in, or blending them back through, gives a better modern curry and more body.
- Finish and yieldThe lemon juice goes in off the boil, and the two-hour total assumes a slow-cooking cut. Two pounds of meat with rice feeds six to eight as written, four to six by current appetites.
By the late nineteenth century curry was thoroughly domesticated in British cookery — no longer exotic, and often said to have become a familiar household dish and a reliable way to use up meat. What marks this version as Anglo-Indian rather than Indian is the reliance on bought curry paste and curry powder, blends sold ready-mixed by British grocers since the later eighteenth century, which reduced a regional repertoire of freshly ground masalas to a single jar. The thickening with ground rice and milk, the stock made from bones, and the lemon at the finish all belong to the standard English sauce vocabulary of the period. Most telling is the line about garlic: permitted "if this is liked," but omitted because the curry will then be "more generally acceptable" — a fair summary of how far the Victorian dinner table would travel. Patna rice, named for the city in Bihar, was the long-grain rice British cooks knew best, and the drain-and-dry method described here was the accepted way to keep the grains separate rather than sticky.