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Two Chopped Gherkins
One dessertspoonful of Chutney.
One saltspoonful of Salt.
Two pounds of Beef. One tablespoonful of Curry Powder. Juice of half a Lemon.
Melt the butter in a stewpan, 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 five minutes. The gherkins, chutney, and salt must now be added, and the stewpan must be set over a very slow fire for about an hour.
It is impossible to give the exact time, as it depends on the meat, which must be quite tender.
Add the lemon-juice just before serving.
A
The page begins mid-ingredient-list, so the butter, onion, meat and curry powder called for in the method have no stated quantities. The method itself is complete and workable, but you are supplying the proportions.
- The missing quantitiesA curry of this sort might take something like 1½ oz butter, a large onion and a tablespoon or so of curry powder to a pound of meat, but the page gives no figures, so any proportion here is a guess, including how much meat the two gherkins, the dessertspoon of chutney and the lemon were meant to season.
- Old spoon measuresA dessertspoonful is reckoned at two teaspoons, a saltspoonful at roughly a quarter teaspoon, though actual Victorian spoons varied by pattern and these figures are conventions rather than exact standards.
- "The curry" means curry powderIn British cookery books of this period "curry" unqualified usually means a blended powder, commonly shop-bought, though some households mixed their own. Frying it into the butter and meat for five minutes, as directed, takes the raw edge off the spices.
- A very slow fireA bare simmer, barely a bubble, around 180-190F in the pan; on an electric hob the lowest setting, with a heat diffuser if need be. The recipe is a stovetop one and offers no oven equivalent.
- LiquidThe recipe adds none, and does not mention a lid, relying on the onion and the meat juices over the hour. Add a few tablespoons of stock or water if it runs dry and check it as it goes; the sauce should be thick, not dry.
- The meatAn hour at a bare simmer suits stewing beef, mutton or leftover cooked joint meat cut small. The instruction that timing "depends on the meat, which must be quite tender" is the honest one — cook to texture, not to the clock.
- Lemon last, and whyLemon last -- the sharpness of fresh juice fades with long cooking, so adding it just before serving, as directed, keeps the lift against a heavy curry powder.
- YieldOn the proportions above, three to four servings with rice.
Curry powder in a British kitchen by the late nineteenth century was a domesticated thing: a bought blend, used much as one would use mustard or Worcestershire sauce, and applied to whatever meat the household had. One plausible reading of the pair of chopped gherkins is that a pickle from the northern European larder stands in for the sour note an Indian cook would get from tamarind, raw mango or lime. Bottled chutney, itself an Anglo-Indian export product sold under brand names, does similar work. Cookery books of the "high class" sort often gathered curries into a chapter of their own; the dishes in such chapters generally tell you more about Victorian pantries than about the subcontinent.