Curry Sauce
One tablespoon of butter; two teaspoons of chopped onion; one teaspoon of flour; one teaspoon of curry powder; one pint of beef broth or water; one-eighth saltspoon of salt. This sauce is used as a basis for many dishes. Cold meat or fish, canned salmon or lobster, shrimps or oysters, all may be heated in this sauce and a great variety of dishes is thus made possible. Have the butter hot and fry in it the chopped onion until a delicate brown, then add the curry powder. Simmer for ten minutes and then stir into it the flour that has been rubbed smooth in a tablespoon of cold water. When thickened slightly, strain and it is ready to use. Shrimps, if using the canned fish, should be rinsed off with cold water and added to the sauce. Heat to boiling and season with three tablespoons of orange juice. For fish curry, add to the sauce any cooked fish, taking care that it does not break into small pieces, as this makes an unattractivelooking dish. Serve very hot.
A thin Anglo-Indian curry sauce of the sort every general cookbook carried around 1900, intended as a vehicle for leftovers. The written method has one clear gap and one implausible measurement, both worth sorting out before you start.
- The broth goes in unmentionedThe ingredient list calls for a pint of beef broth or water, but the method never says to add it. Pour it in after the curry powder has fried with the onion, and let that be the ten-minute simmer; the flour paste goes in afterward.
- Bloom the powder, brieflyFrying the curry powder in the hot butter before any liquid arrives is the hinge of the dish. Thirty to sixty seconds is enough to drive off the raw, dusty edge of the spice; longer over direct heat and the turmeric and coriander scorch bitter.
- A saltspoon, and an eighth of oneA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so an eighth of one is a few grains. Given a pint of liquid this is almost certainly a misprint or an assumption that the broth is already seasoned. Salt to taste at the end.
- Expect a thin sauceOne teaspoon of flour to a pint of liquid gives a barely bound sauce, closer to a gravy than the coating consistency modern cooks expect. If you want it to cling to fish or shrimp, use a tablespoon of flour and the same amount of butter to match.
- Curry powder has changedCommercial powders of the period were generally mild and turmeric-heavy. A present-day Madras blend is hotter and more aromatic; start with half the teaspoon called for, taste, and add more.
- Canned shrimp and salmonThe rinse under cold water is worth keeping, as it removes the tinny brine. Both are fully cooked, so they need only to be warmed through in the finished sauce, a minute or two. Fresh oysters, however, must be cooked through as the recipe directs, heated to boiling.
- The orange juiceThree tablespoons of orange juice go in at the end. Add it off the heat so the freshness survives, and taste before serving.
- YieldRoughly a pint of sauce once strained, probably enough to dress about a pound of cooked fish or meat and serve four over rice.
The Butterick Cook Book belongs to the great wave of American general household manuals published in the early twentieth century, and its curry sauce is a thoroughly Anglo-American article: curry powder cooked in butter and thickened with flour, thinned with beef broth. The technique came to the United States by way of Britain, where curry powder had been sold ready-blended since the late eighteenth century and where curry was widely recommended as a way to serve up yesterday's cold joint. The instruction here is explicit about that purpose -- "Cold meat or fish, canned salmon or lobster, shrimps or oysters, all may be heated in this sauce" -- the sauce is a system for salvage, not a dish in its own right. The strained finish and the absence of any whole spice, fresh chili, ginger or coconut mark how far the preparation had drifted from anything cooked in India; what survived the passage was the powder tin and the word.