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Curried Rice
1 cup rice 2 qts. boiling water 1 tablespoon salt 1 teaspoon curry powder 1 cup White Sauce No. 1 In cooking follow the directions as given under boiled rice. Dilute the curry powder and combine with the white sauce; add more salt if necessary, and pour over the drained rice. Serve with veal or mutton.
A plain boiled-and-sauced rice from the era when rice was cooked like pasta in a large volume of salted water and drained. The curry powder is the only thing that needs real attention.
- Bloom the curry powderCommercial curry powder of this period was raw ground spice, and stirring it into finished white sauce leaves a dusty, slightly bitter edge. Cook the teaspoon in the butter for a minute before adding the flour, or warm it in a spoonful of the milk until fragrant. The recipe's own "dilute" most likely means no more than slaking the powder with a little liquid so it does not go in as dry dust.
- White Sauce No. 1Numbered white sauces in books of this period usually run from thin to thick, so No. 1 is probably the thin one, on the order of 1 tablespoon each butter and flour to 1 cup milk, with salt and pepper. A sauce of that weight coats the grains rather than binding them.
- The boiling-water methodTwo quarts of water to one cup of rice is not a misprint; rice cooked this way is boiled in abundant salted water and drained, typically 15 to 20 minutes, though the book's own "boiled rice" directions are not reproduced on this page. A long-grain white rice suits this best, and rinsing it first helps the drained grains stay separate.
- SaltA tablespoon of salt in two quarts of cooking water seasons the grain and is mostly poured away with the water. The instruction to "add more salt if necessary" applies to the sauce, which will need it once the curry powder is in.
- Drying the riceAfter draining, return the rice to the hot dry pan off the heat for a minute or two so surface moisture steams off. Sauce poured over wet rice thins out and slides to the bottom of the dish.
- YieldOne cup of raw rice gives about three cups cooked, enough for four as a side dish.
- ServingThe suggested partners, veal and mutton, are mild and fatty respectively. Lamb shoulder or a braised veal shank still works; so does roast chicken.
Curry powder had long been a British and American pantry staple by the time this book appeared, sold pre-blended and treated as a single flavour rather than a set of spices to be balanced at home. What it produces here is not an Indian dish but the Anglo-American "curried" style: a flour-and-milk white sauce, a spoonful of yellow powder, and a bland starch underneath. The pairing with veal and mutton is the giveaway, since curry sauces in nineteenth-century English cookery were a standard way of dressing plain or leftover meats.