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Pork
Cut two and one-half pounds of fresh pork into square pieces, fry them in a stewpan with a piece of butter; chop four onions and fry them also, then mix with the pork. Add one tablespoon (scant) of curry powder, season with salt and pepper, pour in one pint of water or stock, set over the fire until boiling, stirring constantly. Draw to one side and simmer slowly for about three-quarters of an hour. When done take out the pieces of pork, boil the gravy until about half the quantity, and pour it over the meat. Serve with rice.
— Mrs. Wendell S. Sherman
A straightforward curried pork stew that needs almost no translation, though a few of its assumptions are worth spelling out.
- The cut"Fresh pork" means uncured — as opposed to the salt pork and ham that were staples of 19th-century larders. Shoulder or butt is the right choice for a 45-minute simmer; loin cut into cubes will be dry and stringy by the time the gravy is done.
- StewpanA heavy, lidded pan; a Dutch oven or a deep covered skillet will do. Since the pork is browned in the same vessel it stews in, give it room — crowded meat steams instead of colouring.
- Curry powderA scant tablespoon for two and a half pounds of meat is mild by current standards; period commercial curry powders were heavy on turmeric, coriander and fenugreek with little chile. Bloom it in the fat with the onions for a minute before the liquid goes in, or it stays raw and dusty.
- The liquid is deliberately shortOne pint for 2.5 lb of pork will not cover the meat. That is intended — this is a braise, not a soup, and the final reduction depends on starting low. Keep the lid on and the heat gentle.
- "Draw to one side"On a wood or coal range, meaning move the pan off the hot plate to a cooler part of the top. On a modern hob, the lowest setting that keeps a lazy bubble going.
- Reducing the gravyLifting out the pork before boiling the sauce down by half is the step that makes the dish; leaving the meat in while the liquid reduces hard overcooks it. There is no thickener, so the body comes entirely from the reduction and the collapsed onions.
- YieldServes four to six with rice. The recipe specifies nothing beyond "rice"; plainly boiled long-grain is a safe default.
Curry powder had been a fixture of English grocery shelves since the late 18th century, sold ready-blended so that a cook needed no knowledge of the individual spices, and by the time this compilation was assembled a "curry" in a village receipt book meant precisely this: familiar meat, onions, stock and a spoonful of the tin, served with rice. The dish belongs to the class of Anglo-Indian cookery that reached American kitchens secondhand. Community cookbooks like this one collected recipes under the contributor's married name — Mrs. Wendell S. Sherman — a convention that credited the household as much as the cook, and that makes these volumes a roster of a town's kitchens as much as a set of instructions.