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Curried Vegetables No. 1
1/2 pound carrots 1/2 pound turnips 1/2 pound celery 1/2 pound onions 1/2 pound brown gravy 1 ounce butter Curry powder Cut the vegetables into small pieces, and throw them into a saucepan with cold water. Let them boil, then drain at once, and dry them on a cloth. Now put them in a saucepan with the butter, and fry them, taking care that they do not burn or get very brown. Have the gravy hot, add it to the vegetables and let them stew very slowly until they are quite tender, which will be in about half an hour. Now add curry powder to taste, and let the curry stand for another five minutes on the stove, then serve with plenty of boiled rice.
A straightforward braise of root vegetables in brown gravy, with the curry powder stirred in only at the very end. That last point is the one to watch.
- Curry powder at the endThe recipe gives the powder only five minutes on the stove, which is little time for raw spice to lose its dusty edge. Bloom it in the butter with the vegetables during the frying stage instead, or at minimum give it a full 10-15 minutes of simmering in the gravy.
- Half a pound of gravyOlder books weigh liquids as readily as solids. Half a pound of brown gravy is about one cup. That is enough to braise but not submerge two pounds of vegetables; add a little water if the pan dries before the vegetables are tender.
- Brown gravy, meatlessBrown gravy -- in period usage this is a flour-and-butter roux taken to a good nut brown and moistened with stock; whether that stock is meat or vegetable depends on the book, which this page alone does not tell us. Commercial gravy granules will not give the same result.
- The blanch and dryThe initial boil-and-drain probably serves to take the raw sharpness out of turnip and onion and to shorten the frying. Drying the pieces properly matters: wet vegetables steam rather than colour, and the recipe warns only against burning or getting very brown.
- Cut sizesCut everything to a consistent half-inch dice or it will not finish together. Celery is much softer than carrot and turnip, so cut it a shade larger, or add it partway through the stewing.
- Half an hour is optimisticCarrot and turnip in a bare cup of gravy over a very low flame may want 40-45 minutes. Test the carrot, not the celery.
- SeasoningNo salt is listed, on the assumption the gravy carries it. Taste and correct once the curry powder has had its time; a squeeze of lemon at the end lifts the whole dish.
- YieldAbout two pounds of vegetables serves four with rice as a main course, six as a side.
Curried vegetables sit comfortably in a cookery book because curry powder had been doing exactly this job in British kitchens for well over a century by the time such books appeared: a ready-mixed spice blend, sold by grocers, that made plain boiled roots and leftovers taste of something. The blend itself is an Anglo-Indian commercial invention rather than an Indian one, standardised in Britain around turmeric, coriander, cumin, fenugreek and chilli, and it was cheap enough to be a staple of thrifty cooking. The method here is thoroughly English rather than Indian: blanch, fry in butter, moisten with a brown roux gravy, and only then season. Curry powder is treated as a finishing flavour, the way one might add a spoonful of ketchup or Worcestershire sauce. The "No. 1" in the title suggests that a No. 2 is likely to exist somewhere in the book.