Eggs, Curried
INGREDIENTS for dish for 4 persons.-6 eggs, 2 teaspoonfuls of curry-powder, 1½ pint of good gravy, thickening of flour and butter. AVERAGE Cost, 1s. 3d.
Mix the curry-powder to a paste with a little of the gravy, and rub it with a spoon, adding the gravy until it is completely amalgamated. Simmer it till it is reduced to a little more than 1/2 a pint, then thicken with flour and butter. Boil the eggs hard and cut them in quarters, and warm for 5 EGGS, FRIED. minutes in the curry. Serve very hot with boiled rice.
TIME.-4 hours to simmer slowly.
SEASONABLE at any time.
A Victorian curry sauce built on reduced meat gravy, with hard-boiled eggs added at the last minute. The hinge is the reduction: everything depends on simmering the gravy down until it is concentrated enough to carry the spice.
- Imperial pintsBeeton's pint is 20 fl oz, so 1½ pints is 30 fl oz — about 3½ US cups. Reducing to "a little more than ½ a pint" means roughly 11-12 fl oz, a third of the starting volume.
- "Good gravy"Not gravy from a packet and not stock alone: a well-flavoured brown meat gravy, typically the strained pan juices of a roast let down with stock. A strong reduced beef or veal stock is the nearest modern equivalent, and it should be lightly seasoned to begin with, since reducing it by two-thirds concentrates the salt.
- The four hoursThe stated time is for a very slow reduction on a range that was never off the heat. On a modern burner at a bare simmer, 30 fl oz will come down to 12 fl oz in something like an hour, though it varies widely with the width of the pan. Reduce by eye and volume rather than by the clock.
- Curry-powderA Victorian commercial curry powder tended to be heavier on turmeric, coriander and fenugreek than most jars sold today, though period blends usually carried cayenne as well and heat varied by maker. Two teaspoons in a pint and a half is a restrained hand; taste as it reduces, since the spice concentrates along with the gravy. Making it into a paste first, as directed, prevents dry lumps.
- Thickening of flour and butterThis is beurre manié: equal weights of soft butter and flour worked to a paste and whisked into the simmering sauce in small pieces. About ½ oz of each will lightly bind 12 fl oz of liquid. Let it simmer a couple of minutes afterwards to cook out the raw flour.
- The eggsNine to ten minutes at a bare boil for large eggs gives firm yolks without a grey ring; cool briefly before peeling and quartering. The five minutes in the sauce is deliberate — the eggs are only being warmed through, and longer makes the whites rubbery.
- ServingFour portions, with plain boiled long-grain rice. Add the eggs to the sauce off the direct heat and serve immediately; the dish does not reheat well.
Curried eggs belong to the long domestication of Indian cookery in the British kitchen, a process well advanced by the time Isabella Beeton's Book of Household Management appeared in 1861. Commercial curry powder — a British invention, a fixed blend standing in for the varied fresh masalas of the subcontinent — was sold in London from the late eighteenth century onward. The construction here is thoroughly English rather than Indian: no onion, no ginger, no coconut, but a reduced brown meat gravy thickened with flour and butter in the manner of a French sauce, with the curry powder doing the work of a seasoning.