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Veal Curry, Forcemeat Balls For
If liked, a few forcemeat balls may be put into the curry. To make them, boil an egg hard, pound the yolk in a mortar, mix with it some finely-grated bread-crumbs, a pinch of salt, and a seasoning of curry-powder of paste. Rub a small slice of fresh butter into the mixture, form it into balls the size of small marbles, throw these into fast-boiling water for a couple of minutes, and they will be ready for use.
A one-paragraph accompaniment rather than a standalone dish: hard-boiled yolk bound with crumbs and butter, seasoned with curry, and set by a brief poach. The original gives no quantities, so proportions are a matter of feel.
- The hinge: get the paste stiff enoughThe mixture must be dry and cohesive enough to hold a ball before it goes near water, since there is no raw egg or flour to bind it as it cooks. Add crumbs a little at a time until the paste no longer sticks to the fingers; if it feels tacky or loose, it will cloud the water and fall apart.
- Working proportionsThe original works from a single hard-boiled egg and gives no quantities. If you scale to the yolks of two eggs, something like 3-4 tablespoons of fine dry breadcrumbs, a teaspoon of curry powder or paste, a good pinch of salt and about a teaspoon of butter is a reasonable starting point; the yield of marble-sized balls will depend on how you roll them.
- Crumbs"Finely-grated bread-crumbs" means dry crumbs grated from stale crumb, not the soft fresh sort and certainly not the coarse orange packet kind. Grind stale bread in a processor and sieve out the large pieces.
- Butter cold, not meltedRubbing in a slice of fresh butter, as with pastry, distributes fat through the crumbs and helps the balls hold. Melted butter will make the paste greasy and slack.
- Curry powder wants heatVictorian curry powders were generally blends of raw ground spice. Warming the powder for half a minute in a dry pan, or using a paste, takes off the dusty edge that shows up sharply in an uncooked mixture like this.
- Poach gently despite the instruction"Fast-boiling water" will knock these small balls about and break them. Bring the water to the boil, then drop the heat to a bare shiver, slide the balls in, and give them two minutes. They are only being set, not cooked through.
- When to add themPut them into the finished curry off the heat, or in the last minute or two of warming through. Held in simmering sauce they soften and dissolve into it.
Forcemeat comes from the French farce, a stuffing, and by the nineteenth century the word covered any pounded, seasoned mixture rolled into balls or used to stuff a joint or bird. Victorian forcemeats were commonly meat- or suet-based and bound with raw egg; this one is a small, thrifty variant made entirely from a hard-boiled yolk, of a type that also turns up as garnish for mock turtle soup. Its appearance in a veal curry reflects how thoroughly Anglo-Indian curry had been absorbed into the British repertoire by the time Cassell's dictionary was compiled: the spicing came from India by way of commercial curry powders and pastes, while the technique, the garnish and the cut of meat remained wholly English. The instruction that the balls are optional, "if liked," offers the addition as a way of dressing up a plain family dish for company.