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Curry of Beef
2 cups cold beef. 1 cup boiled rice Curry sauce Make curry sauce according to directions given in the chapter on "Sauces," page 101, using meat stock instead of boiling water; add the beef, finely chopped; bring to a boil and serve in a border of hot boiled rice. :
A leftovers dish written as shorthand: the whole recipe depends on a curry sauce printed elsewhere in the book, and the quantities of beef are left to the cook's judgment. Assume roughly a cup of cooked beef to a cup of curry sauce.
- The missing sauceThe recipe leans entirely on the curry sauce given in the chapter on "Sauces," page 101. From the instruction to use meat stock "instead of boiling water," that sauce appears to be a thickened one built on a hot liquid; the substitution of beef stock for water is the only change asked for here.
- Bloom the powderCook the curry powder in the butter with the flour for a full minute before the stock goes in. Curry powder stirred into finished sauce tastes raw and dusty; heated in fat it turns fragrant and loses its chalky edge.
- The beef is already cookedThis is cold roast or boiled beef, chopped fine. "Bring to a boil" means heat the sauce through — a minute or two once the meat is in. Held at a simmer, already-cooked beef shreds and goes dry.
- QuantitiesNo amount of beef is given. A cup of chopped cooked beef to a cup of sauce and a cup of rice serves two generously; scale the sauce with the meat so the mixture stays loose enough to spoon.
- Border of ricePack hot boiled rice into a ring around the edge of a warmed platter, or press it into an oiled ring mould and unmould, then spoon the curry into the centre.
- SaltNo seasoning is specified. Taste the sauce and season at the end, since the meat stock may already carry salt.
Curried leftovers were a fixture of Anglo-American home cookery from the middle of the nineteenth century onward, arriving by way of British India and the commercial curry powders that followed — pre-blended tins that let a cook produce "curry" without keeping whole spices. In American books of Mrs. Fryer's era the formula often runs much the same way: a butter-and-flour sauce, a spoonful of curry powder, chopped cold meat, and a wall of rice to make the plate look like dinner. The rice border, sometimes called a rice ring, was a common presentation for dishes too soft to stand on their own, and it did the double duty of stretching a small quantity of meat across two servings. That economy is what such recipes were for: substituting for meat rather than doing without it.