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Mutton Curry
Wipe and cut meat from fore-quarter of mutton in one-inch pieces; there should be three cupfuls. Put in kettle, cover with cold water, and bring quickly to boiling-point; drain in colander and pour over one quart cold water. Return meat to kettle, cover with one quart boiling water, add three onions cut in slices, one-half teaspoon peppercorns, and a sprig each of thyme and parsley. Simmer until meat is tender, removè meat, strain liquor, and thicken with one-fourth cup each of butter and flour cooked together; to the flour add one-half teaspoon curry powder, one-half teaspoon salt, and one-eighth teaspoon pepper. Add meat to gravy, reheat, and serve with border of steamed rice.
Fricassee of Lamb with Brown Gravy Order three pounds lamb from the fore-quarter, cut in pieces for serving. Wipe meat, put in kettle, cover with boiling water, and cook slowly until meat is tender. Remove from water, cool, sprinkle with salt and pepper, dredge with flour, and sauté in butter or mutton fat. Arrange on platter, and pour around one and one-half cups Brown Sauce made from liquor in which meat was cooked after removing all fat. It is better to cook meat the day before serving, as then fat may be more easily removed.
A stewed curry of the mild Anglo-American type, closer to a fricassee with curry powder in the roux than to anything from the subcontinent. Two recipes have run together in the printing: the curry ends at "border of steamed rice," and the fricassee that follows is a separate dish.
- The blanching stepCovering the meat with cold water, bringing it hard to the boil, then draining and rinsing with a quart of cold water is a scum-removal technique. It is worth keeping for strong mutton, though it costs some flavour; with modern lamb you can skip it and simply skim..
- Fore-quarter muttonMutton means sheep over a year or two old, rarely sold in the United States now. Lamb shoulder is the direct substitute for the fore-quarter, and a boneless shoulder gives the three cupfuls of one-inch cubes the recipe wants — roughly 1 to 1 1/4 lb of trimmed meat.
- Simmering time"Until meat is tender" for cubed shoulder generally means about 1 to 1 1/2 hours at a bare simmer, longer for true mutton. Cubes that size may feel done earlier and still be tough; the connective tissue wants the extra time.
- The roux is very largeThe roux is generous -- A quarter cup each of butter and flour will give a quart of stock a thick, gravy-like body, heavier than most cooks want today. Cook the roux two or three minutes without colouring, then add stock gradually and stop when the sauce coats a spoon — you may use less than all of it, or thin the finished sauce back with reserved liquor.
- Curry powderHalf a teaspoon in a quart of sauce is faint by present standards, reflecting a period when curry powder was a genteel accent. A tablespoon or more is defensible; bloom it in the butter with the flour, as the recipe directs, rather than stirring it in raw at the end.
- Border of steamed riceThe dish was served in the well of a ring of rice pressed into a mould or piped round the platter. The recipe says nothing more than steamed rice; a plain, firm rice holds the border best, and the curry is spooned into the centre.
- YieldThree cupfuls of meat and a quart of sauce serves four to six with rice.
- The fricassee's overnight tipCooking the lamb a day ahead so the fat lifts off solid is sound advice and applies equally to the curry. Chill the strained liquor and lift the cap before making the roux.
Curry powder is generally said to have reached American home cooking through British India by way of English cookery books, where it was commonly stirred into a flour-and-butter roux and applied to whatever cheap boiling meat was to hand. This recipe belongs to that tradition — it is a white fricassee with one seasoning changed. The fore-quarter was the economical end of the animal, and the elaborate blanch-and-rinse opening reflects mutton's reputation for strong fat and scum, a reputation often credited with driving American buyers toward younger lamb over the following decades until mutton effectively disappeared from the retail trade. The rice border, moulded or piped round the platter, was a familiar way of serving a dish in a thickened sauce in this period.