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Curried Vegetables (1 cupful string beans celery)
1 cupful string beans 2 celery stalks 2 sweet red peppers oz.) flour I heaping tablespoonful (I I heaping tablespoonful (I oz.) butter 1 tablespoonful curry powder 1 teaspoonful salt 1 cupful (1/2 lb.) boiled rice 1 pint (2 cups) stock Cook all the vegetables, then cut them into diceshaped pieces. Melt the butter in a casserole, add the onions, and fry them a nice brown color. Stir in the flour and curry powder, add gradually the stock, stir till boiling, then simmer for a quarter of an hour; add the vegetables, season nicely, cover the casserole, and cook slowly for half an hour.
Remove the fat from the top of the vegetables.
Place the red peppers cut in strips on the top and serve with the rice.
A straightforward vegetable curry built on a butter-and-flour roux, of the mild Anglo-American type that was standard in early twentieth-century household books. The method assumes a flameproof earthenware casserole that goes from burner to table.
- The vesselIn this book a casserole is a lidded earthenware or fireproof china pot used directly over the flame, not a modern baked-in-the-oven dish. A heavy enamelled cast-iron pot or any flameproof lidded pan does the same job; a stoneware baking dish will crack on a burner.
- Onions and egg-plantThe method browns onions that appear nowhere in the ingredient list, so no quantity is given for them; the egg-plant is listed as one, though with no size. One medium onion suits the pint of stock and cupful of beans.
- MeasuresA heaping tablespoonful is given as one ounce for both flour and butter; an ounce of butter is about 2 tablespoons, while an ounce of flour comes nearer 3 to 4 level tablespoons. A pint here is 2 cups, as the text states.
- Curry powderCommercial curry powders of this period leaned heavily on turmeric, coriander and fenugreek, so a full tablespoon gives a mild result. Frying it in the butter-flour roux for a minute before the stock goes in removes the raw taste; scorching it turns the sauce bitter.
- Cooking the vegetables twiceThe instruction to cook the vegetables first, then simmer them a further half hour, will reduce beans and celery to mush. Boil or steam them only until barely tender, or add them raw to the sauce and let the half hour do the work.
- StockAny light meat or vegetable stock serves. Note that the recipe is not vegetarian unless you choose it to be, and that the direction to skim fat from the top assumes a fatty homemade broth.
- RiceA cupful is given as half a pound, and since the recipe specifies boiled rice this is most likely a cooked weight. The recipe gives no serving count.
- The peppersThe peppers are cut in strips and laid on top at the end rather than stewed into the sauce; whether they are included in the opening direction to cook all the vegetables is not clear from the text. Roasted and peeled peppers are a reasonable substitute if you want them softer.
Curry powder reached English and American kitchens as a pre-mixed shop commodity, and by the time of this book it was a pantry staple treated much like any other seasoning: stirred into a flour roux, thinned with stock, and served with a ring of boiled rice. The result belongs to the Anglo-Indian tradition rather than to any regional Indian cooking, and the pairing of curry with string beans, celery and eggplant shows how thoroughly the flavoring had been absorbed into ordinary household cookery.