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Chicken Curry
Clean and cut up the chicken and place it in a saucepan with boiling water, 2 onions, and a bouquet of herbs. Cover, and cook until tender; season with salt and pepper. Melt 2 tablespoonfuls of butter in a saucepan with 2 of flour. Cook two minutes; add half a tablespoonful of curry powder and cook two minutes longer. Add the strained broth and cook until smooth. Arrange the chicken on a hot platter and garnish with boiled rice.
A late-Victorian or Edwardian curry in the Anglo-French manner: the bird is poached, the broth becomes a curry-flavoured velouté, and the two are served side by side with rice. The success of the dish rests entirely on how you treat the curry powder.
- Cook the powder, don't just stir it inThe two minutes of frying the curry powder in the butter-flour roux is the hinge of the recipe. Raw curry powder tastes dusty and bitter; heating it in fat blooms the spices and removes that edge. Keep the heat moderate so the ground spices do not scorch.
- How much brothNo quantity is given. Two tablespoons each of butter and flour will thicken about 1 cup (240 ml) of broth to a sauce that coats; use 1 1/4 cups for a thinner pouring sauce. Add it warm and in stages, whisking smooth before the next addition.
- Bird sizeA "chicken" in this period was often a 3-4 lb bird; period books generally reserved "fowl" for older birds needing longer cooking. A modern 3 1/2 lb chicken, cut into eight pieces, simmers tender in 35-45 minutes; barely simmer rather than boil, or the breast shreds.
- Bouquet of herbsA bouquet garni: a few parsley stems, a sprig of thyme and a bay leaf, tied or bundled so it can be lifted out. Tie the onions in nothing — halve them and let them go loose in the pot.
- Boiling waterEnough to cover the pieces by an inch, no more. Excess water gives weak broth, and the broth is the sauce here. If it tastes thin after cooking, reduce it briskly before making the velouté.
- DonenessDark meat should read 175F (79C) at the bone and the joints should move freely; breast pieces are done at 165F (74C) and can be lifted out earlier and kept warm on the platter.
- RicePlainly boiled and drained rice is the likely intention; no butter or spice in it, since the sauce carries the seasoning. Allow about 1/3 cup uncooked rice per person, since it is serving as a garnish rather than the base of the plate.
- Yield and servingServes four. The recipe says nothing about how the sauce is to be served, so either spoon a little over the chicken and send the rest in a boat, or pass it separately. Mango chutney is a period-appropriate accompaniment.
Curry entered English and American cookbooks by way of the British in India, and by the time compilations like this one appeared the dish had been thoroughly domesticated: commercial curry powder, a butter-and-flour roux, and rice arranged as a garnish rather than as the base of the meal. The technique here is straight French velouté — cook the roux, cook the spice, moisten with the cooking liquor — which is why the result is closer to a mild spiced fricassee than to anything served on the subcontinent. Curry powder itself was a British commercial invention of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, sold ready-blended so that a cook with no knowledge of individual spices could produce something recognisably "Indian"; brands varied enormously in heat and in turmeric content, which is why the half tablespoon specified here may read as timid or assertive depending on what is in your tin.