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Veal Curry, Made with Fresh Meat
Veal may be curried whether it is cooked or not. The fresh meat is, of course, to be preferred, though the other is very good. To curry fresh veal, take about two pounds of veal from the breast or cutlets from the neck. Cut it into neat pieces convenient for serving, rub these over with curry-powder, and fry them in hot fat till they are brightly browned. Take them up, put them into a saucepan with a pint of stock, and simmer them gently till tender. Slice a large onion, and mince an apple finely. Fry these in the fat in which the veal was fried, till they are quite soft. Rub them patiently through a sieve, then mix with the pulp a table-spoonful of curry-paste, a dessert-spoonful of ground rice, a pinch of salt, and a tea-spoonful of finely-minced lemon-rind. Add gradually the stock in which the veal has simmered, let the sauce boil up, put the cutlets in again, and simmer all together over a gentle fire for half an hour. Place the meat on a dish, pour the sauce over, and send rice boiled for curry to table on a separate dish. If liked, a little lemon-juice may be used instead of the sour apple, and milk may be substituted for the veal stock. Some cooks put a clove of garlic into the curry, but this is a matter of taste. Time to simmer the veal, three-quarters of an hour in the stock and half an hour in the gravy. Probable cost, veal, 10d. to 1s. per pound. Sufficient for four or five persons.
A straightforward Anglo-Indian braise that depends on two thickeners the modern pantry has mostly forgotten: sieved fried onion and apple, and a spoonful of ground rice. Get those right and the rest follows.
- The hinge: the sieved onion and appleThe sauce has no roux and almost no fat-based body. Its texture comes entirely from onion and apple fried until collapsing and then pushed through a sieve. A blender or stick blender does the same job in seconds, but do not skip the long, patient frying first — undercooked onion gives a thin, raw-tasting gravy.
- Ground riceThis is dry ground rice, a coarse rice meal, not cooked rice; fine rice flour is the nearest modern substitute. A dessert-spoonful is about 2 teaspoons; it thickens lightly. Whisk it into the pulp before any liquid goes in.
- Curry-powder and curry-pasteBoth were sold ready-made by Victorian grocers and are still available. The powder is a dry rub for the meat, the paste a wet seasoning stirred into the sieved pulp; if you have only powder, use about 2 teaspoons of it in place of the paste at that point.
- Spoon and volume measuresA tablespoonful here is roughly 15 ml, a dessert-spoonful 10 ml, a teaspoonful 5 ml. The pint of stock is an imperial pint, 20 fl oz, so about 2 1/2 US cups.
- The cutBreast of veal is a fatty, gelatinous cut that rewards the full three-quarters of an hour; neck cutlets also carry connective tissue and suit the same treatment. If you are using modern veal shoulder or leg cubes, check for tenderness at 40 minutes rather than assuming the stated time.
- Total cooking timeThree-quarters of an hour in stock plus half an hour in the sauce is 75 minutes of simmering. That is right for connective-tissue cuts but too much for pale, tender veal escalope, which will shred. Keep the heat at a bare tremble throughout.
- Lemon rindFinely minced rind means zest only — the white pith turns the sauce bitter over the second half-hour of cooking.
- Rice boiled for curryThis refers to the book's own separate method for plain boiled rice, drained and dried off, served alongside rather than under the meat. Basmati works well as a modern stand-in.
- YieldTwo pounds of veal serves four to five as the original states, assuming rice and perhaps a chutney alongside.
By the time Cassell's was compiled in the late nineteenth century, curry had been a fixture of the British middle-class table for a century, but it had been thoroughly domesticated: bought curry powder and curry paste from a grocer's shelf, onion and sour apple for body and sweetness, lemon for acidity, and a thickener of ground rice standing in for the coconut, tamarind and fresh aromatics of the dishes the idea came from. The apple is the tell \== a British substitution for a souring agent, and the recipe itself offers lemon juice as an alternative, which is closer to the original intent. Veal appears here because Cassell's works methodically through every meat in turn, and because curry was understood in Victorian households as a treatment applicable to almost anything, cooked or raw. The garlic mentioned as "a matter of taste" can perhaps be read as a small window on the period: arguably still faintly suspect in an English kitchen, and offered as an option rather than an ingredient.