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Indian Curry
1 oz. raw lean ham 2 tablespoons butter 1 teaspoon curry 1/2 cup cream 2 egg yolks 1 pt. Veloute Sauce 2 tablespoons lemon juice 1 tablespoon minced onion 1 sprig thyme 12 peppercorns Cook the onion, ham, thyme and peppers with the butter until well reduced. Rub the curry into the Veloute Sauce and combine with the butter mixture, boil ten minutes and strain. Dilute the egg yolks with the cream and combine with the sauce. Cook over hot water until it begins to thicken, then add the lemon and serve.
This is a curry-flavoured velouté finished as a liaison sauce, meant to be poured over poached or boiled fish rather than eaten as a curry in its own right. The whole thing hinges on the last stage: once the yolks go in, the sauce must never boil.
- The hinge: no boiling after the liaisonEgg yolks diluted with cream will curdle at a simmer. Hold the double boiler water below a bubble and stir until the sauce coats a spoon, around 175-180F, then take it off the heat immediately. The ten-minute boil earlier in the recipe happens before the yolks are added, and that order matters.
- VeloutéA pint is 2 cups. Use a velouté built on a light stock thickened with a blond roux of equal butter and flour, about 2 tablespoons of each per cup of stock, simmered long enough to lose any raw flour taste.
- "Raw lean ham"This means uncooked cured ham, not a boiled deli ham — prosciutto, speck or a scrap of unsmoked country ham. It is a seasoning only, and it is strained out. One ounce is a slice or two.
- Curry powderCommercial curry powders of the period were often milder and more turmeric-forward than many blends sold now. Start with a level teaspoon of a mild blend and taste after the ten-minute boil, which is what cooks out the raw spice edge.
- Rubbing the curry inWork the powder into a little of the cold or warm velouté to a smooth paste before adding the rest, or it will stay in gritty specks that the strainer will remove along with your seasoning.
- "Well reduced"Sweat the onion, ham, thyme and peppercorns in the butter over low heat until the onion is soft and translucent and the butter is fragrant, roughly 8-10 minutes. No colour is wanted.
- StrainingPass it through a fine sieve and press hard on the solids. The twelve whole peppercorns are there for perfume, not heat, and must not go through.
- Yield and servingAbout 2 1/2 cups, enough to sauce six to eight portions. Add the lemon juice off the heat at the very end so its acidity does not encourage the yolks to break.
Curry powders of the nineteenth-century Anglo-Indian kitchen — standardized, turmeric-heavy blends sold in tins — let a European cook produce something recognizably "Indian" without the fresh grinding and layered frying that the term implies in India. This sauce follows that pattern: a classical French sauce with curry powder rubbed into it, finished with a yolk-and-cream liaison in the manner of a sauce allemande or poulette.