Curry
-INGREDIENTS. - Veal, mutton, fowl or rabbit: a large onion, butter, brown gravy or stock, a tablespoonful of and Co.'s curry-powder.
Let the meat be half fried. Cut the onion into small pieces, and fry it in butter till quite brown; add the meat, with a small quantity of brown gravy or stock, also the curry-powder, and stew all for about 20 minutes. This is for a dry curry; more gravy and curry-powder can be used if preferred.
TIME.-20 minutes.
SEASONABLE at any time.
Curry-Powder. (Founded on Dr.
KITCHENER'S Recipe.) - INGREDIENTS.lb. of coriander seed, lb. of turmeric, 2 oz. of cinnamon-seed, oz. of cayenne, 1 oz. of CUSTARDS, BOILED. mustard, 1 oz. of ground ginger, oz. of allspice, 2 oz. of fenugreek seed. Put all the ingredients in a cool oven, where they should remain one night; then pound them in a mortar, rub them through a sieve, and mix thoroughly together; keep the powder in a bottle, from which the air should be completely excluded.
Curry-Powder. (Captain WHITE'S Recipe; most excellent.) - INGREDIENTS. -1 lb. of pale turmeric seed, 4 oz. of cumming seed, 8 oz. of coriander seed, 4 oz. of black pepper, 2 oz. of cayenne pepper, 4 oz. of Jamaica ginger, 10 oz. of caraway seed, 1/4 oz. of cardamums.
Mix together all these ingredients, well pounded, and then place the mixture in the sun, or before the fire, stirring it frequently. Note. This will be found a most excellent curry-powder, if care be taken to purchase the ingredients at a good druggist's.
Curry St. Leonard's. - INGREDIENTS. -Chicken or any meat; 2 tablespoonfuls of butter, 2 tablespoonfuls of currypowder, 4 or 5 leaves of mint, a teacup of good gravy, salt, a dessertspoonful of vinegar, 3 tablespoonfuls of cream, 1 dessertspoonful of Stembridge's chutnee. Fry together for 10 minutes the butter, curry-powder and mint; then add the meat cut into small pieces, also the gravy, salt and vinegar. Let all these simmer for 20 minutes, and then pour over the cream, and serve quite hot.
TIME.-30 minutes.
SEASONABLE at any time.
Four related entries: a plain meat curry, two curry-powder blends, and a richer chicken curry finished with cream. The powders are the useful part; the curries themselves are quick braises that assume the meat is already tender.
- Quantities are missing from the first powderThe Kitchener blend has lost the figures before coriander, turmeric, cayenne and allspice, so it cannot be mixed as printed. Captain White's blend is complete and can be scaled down by a factor of eight for a domestic jar.
- Toast, do not bake"A cool oven" here is a low, slack oven, warm enough (and by morning barely that) to dry the whole spices so they grind cleanly; no temperature can be pinned to the phrase. Modern practice is a dry pan over medium heat until fragrant, a minute or two, then grind; sun-drying as White directs is unnecessary indoors.
- "Cinnamon-seed" and "cumming""Cinnamon-seed" is unexplained; it is usually read as cinnamon or cassia bark, though it may be a misprint, so ground cinnamon is the safe substitution. "Cumming" is cumin. "Jamaica ginger" is dried ginger from Jamaica, for which ordinary dried ginger will serve, and "turmeric seed" means the dried rhizome.
- The caraway is not a misprintTen ounces of caraway in White's blend is a very large proportion and gives a distinctly Victorian, anise-leaning powder quite unlike a modern Indian masala. Reduce it sharply, or substitute cumin, if you want something closer to current taste.
- Buying at "a good druggist's"In Mrs Beeton's day the chemist was a usual source for whole spices. Today buy whole seed from a shop with turnover and grind it yourself; pre-ground turmeric and coriander lose much of their aroma within months.
- Half-fry, then stewThe hinge in the first curry is browning the onion until quite brown before the meat and powder go in. Raw curry powder tastes dusty, so let it fry in the butter and onion for a minute before the liquid is added.
- Twenty minutes suits tender cuts onlyFowl, rabbit and veal escalope will cook in that time; shoulder of mutton or stewing beef needs an hour and a half or more with extra stock. Judge by the meat, not the clock.
- Cream at the endCurry St. Leonard's says only to pour over the cream and serve quite hot; add it off the boil and warm it through, since with the vinegar in the pan boiling cream may curdle.
- Chutnee and yieldStembridge's appears to have been a proprietary bottled chutney; any mango chutney does the same job. Neither curry states a quantity of meat, so no yield can be given.
Curry powder is often described as a British invention rather than an Indian one u2014 a single fixed blend standing in for the spices a cook in India would have ground fresh for each dish. Dr William Kitchiner, whose Apicius Redivivus, or The Cook's Oracle (1817) Mrs Beeton drew on freely, published one of the domestic formulas that was widely copied, and "Captain White's" belongs to the familiar genre of recipes credited to officers home from the East, whose authority as travellers was the selling point. The gap in the first entry, where a proprietary brand is named only as "and Co.'s curry-powder", is a reminder that ready-mixed powders were sold under proprietary names and could simply be added to leftover joints. "Curry St. Leonard's", with its mint, vinegar and cream, is an English dish wearing a curry name.