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Curried Pork
After removing the skin and superfluous fat from 2 1/2 pounds of pork, cut it into small, thin pieces, put them in a saucepan with a tablespoonful of butter, and fry for a few minutes till they begin to turn brown; then put in 2 chopped onions, a tablespoonful of curry powder, and salt and pepper to taste. Stir all together and pour in 2 cupfuls broth or water; let it come to a boil, and then only simmer for about an hour; then put the pieces of meat on a dish and keep hot while the broth is boiled quickly down one-half. Pour it over the meat, and serve with well-boiled rice, as a garnish or separately.
A plain nineteenth-century curry in the Anglo-Indian manner: brown, stew, reduce, serve over rice. The method holds up, but the seasoning and the cut need attention.
- Cut of porkThin pieces simmered an hour want shoulder (Boston butt) rather than loin or tenderloin, which turn dry and stringy at that length. Trim hard fat but leave the intramuscular fat.
- Bloom the curry powderThe hinge of the dish. Add the powder to the hot butter with the onions and stir for a minute before any liquid goes in; raw curry powder wetted straight away tastes dusty and flat.
- Curry powder strengthCommercial curry powders of this period were generally milder than modern ones, typically built on turmeric and coriander with other warm spices. Modern blends vary widely in heat, so taste and adjust rather than assuming the quantity is fixed.
- CupfulsTwo cupfuls is about 16 fl oz total, which barely covers 2 1/2 lb of meat. Use enough stock to come level with the pork and expect a longer reduction at the end.
- Simmer, do not boil"Only simmer" is the instruction that matters. A bare tremble at around 190F keeps the pork tender; a rolling boil at this stage will toughen it.
- Finishing the sauceReducing by half concentrates salt as well as flavour, so hold back on seasoning until the sauce is where you want it. A squeeze of lemon or a spoonful of yoghurt off the heat lifts a sauce that reads heavy.
- Internal temperaturePork shoulder braised this way should reach roughly 185-195F internally, well past any food-safety threshold, at which point the connective tissue has softened. Judge by fork-tenderness rather than the clock.
- Yield2 1/2 lb of trimmed shoulder serves six with rice.
Curries entered English and American household cookbooks through the Anglo-Indian kitchen, where returning colonial families brought back a taste for spiced stews and, more importantly, for the bottled or tinned curry powder that made them reproducible without a spice grinder. By the time compendia like this one were assembled, curry powder was a standard grocery item, and "curried" had become a fixed cookbook category applied to whatever protein was to hand: veal, rabbit, cold roast lamb, and here pork. The formula is always the same shape -- fry, add onion and powder, moisten, simmer, reduce, serve with rice around the edge of the dish -- and it is a long way from any regional Indian cooking. What it records is a Victorian and Edwardian convenience: one tin on the shelf that could turn an ordinary braise into something the family regarded as exotic.