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Curry of Veal (Tablespoons butter)
2 tablespoons butter or drippings 1½ pounds veal 1/2 onion Salt and pepper 1 pint milk 1 tablespoon flour 1 teaspoon curry powder Chop the onion; fry it in the butter; remove and fry the veal until it is brown. Transfer the meat to the double boiler; cover with milk and cook until tender. Add the curry powder shortly before the meat is done and thicken the milk with flour. Serve in a border of rice.
A mild, milk-based curry of the kind American cookbooks published for decades before heat and spice became fashionable. The method is sound, but the double boiler and the vague quantities need translating.
- The hinge: cook it gently in milkMilk held over direct heat with acid-free meat will still scorch and separate at a simmer. The double boiler is not fussiness — it keeps the milk below boiling so it stays smooth while the veal tenderises. A heavy pot over the lowest possible flame, lid on, works if you have no double boiler, but check it often.
- Cut of vealUse shoulder or breast, cut in 1-inch cubes. Modern veal scallopini or loin is far too lean for an hour of moist cooking and will go stringy. Expect 1 to 1½ hours in the double boiler before it is fork-tender.
- That fried onionThe recipe removes the onion and never says to put it back. Return it to the pot with the veal and milk; the intent is plainly to keep it from burning while the meat browns, not to throw it away.
- Curry powderCommercial American curry powder of this period was generally mild and turmeric-heavy, and tinned powder loses its aroma quickly. A teaspoon in a pint of milk is very gentle by current standards; you may want two or three times as much. The recipe adds it near the end, which gives the spices little cooking; frying it briefly in the butter with the onion instead will round out the flavour.
- ThickeningOne tablespoon of flour to a pint of milk gives a thin sauce that just coats. Whisk it with a little cold milk into a slurry before stirring it in, or the flour will lump in hot milk. Give it a few minutes to lose the pasty taste.
- A pintTwo cups. The veal should be barely covered; if it is not, add a splash more milk rather than water.
- Border of ricePlain long-grain rice, pressed into a ring mould or simply spooned in a circle around the edge of a hot platter with the curry in the centre. Allow about 1½ cups raw rice.
- YieldServes four.
Curry entered American home cookery largely through England, and by the time this book was written it had been thoroughly domesticated: commercial curry powder from a tin, a white sauce base, and no chilli heat at all. Recipes of this type — meat simmered in milk or cream, thickened with flour, a spoonful of curry powder stirred in near the end — appear across late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century American and British household manuals, where curry often functioned less as a cuisine than as a flavouring for leftover or inexpensive meat. Veal was a natural candidate: relatively inexpensive, bland enough to take the seasoning, and suited to the long gentle cooking a double boiler provides. A "border of rice" was a common presentation of the period, a way of making a stewed dish look composed on a platter, and it appears around creamed chicken and curried eggs as well as around veal.