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One Onion (Tablespoonful of Curry Powder)
One tablespoonful of Curry Powder.
Half a pint of Stock.
Half a saltspoonful of Salt.
Juice of half a Lemon.
Melt the butter in a saucepan, put in the onion sliced and fry a few minutes.
Then add the meat cut into small pieces and cook all together. Now sprinkle the curry over the meat and stir the contents of the saucepan over the fire for about five minutes. The stock and the salt must now be added and the curry cooked slowly for about an hour and a half or until the meat is tender. Add the lemon-juice just before serving. (Mutton or veal may be cooked by this recipe.)
A plain Anglo-Indian braised curry, printed here with half its ingredient list assumed rather than stated. The method is sound; the quantities need filling in before you start.
- Missing quantitiesThe heading names one onion and a tablespoon of curry powder, but the butter and the meat are called for in the method without ever being measured. On the scale implied by half a pint of stock, work to about 1½ lb of boneless mutton or veal, one medium onion and 1 to 2 oz of butter.
- Half a pint of stockAn Imperial half pint is 10 fl oz, or 1¼ US cups. It is a modest amount for a ninety-minute braise, so use a heavy pan with a close lid and top up with a little more stock if the pan threatens to go dry.
- SaltspoonfulA saltspoon is generally reckoned at about a quarter teaspoon, so half of one is roughly an eighth of a teaspoon. That is a token amount by modern habits, and the seasoning here leans on whatever salt the stock carries. Season to taste at the end instead.
- The hinge: frying the powderThe five minutes of stirring the curry powder over the fire before any liquid goes in is the step that matters. Raw curry powder in liquid tastes dusty and harsh; toasted in fat it turns nutty and sweet. Keep the heat moderate and stir constantly, as the ground spices scorch in seconds.
- Curry powder itselfVictorian British curry powder was usually bought ready-mixed and tended to be turmeric-heavy, with coriander, cumin, fenugreek and chilli, though blends varied between makers and some cooks mixed their own. Any decent madras-style powder stands in. Ground spice fades fast, so a tin that has been open a year will give you colour and little else.
- Meat and timingNinety minutes at a bare simmer suits shoulder or neck of mutton or a stewing cut of veal, which is what the recipe intends. Modern lamb leg or veal escalope will be dry and stringy long before the time is up; buy a collagen-rich cut and let it go slowly.
- The lemon at the endAcid added at the finish stays bright; boiled for an hour it goes flat and slightly bitter. Stir it in off the heat and taste, as half a lemon can be anything from one to three tablespoons.
- Yield and servingThe recipe gives no yield; on the reconstructed quantities above it would serve about four with plain boiled rice. Chutney was a common accompaniment to curries of this kind.
Curries like this one were a fixture of British middle- and upper-class cookery by the late nineteenth century, arriving through the East India Company and settling into a domestic formula that owes more to Britain than to any Indian kitchen: onion fried in butter, a spoonful of ready-mixed powder from a tin, stock, and a long gentle braise finished with lemon. Commercially blended curry powder was being advertised for sale in London by the later eighteenth century, and its convenience is exactly what made the dish a standby for cooks with no knowledge of individual spices. The recipe's closing note that mutton or veal may be used shows the formula was treated as interchangeable between meats.