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Curried Mutton Forcemeat Balls
Place two pounds of mutton cut from the leg into a mortar and pound it to a pulp, then mix in a tablespoonful each of chopped sweet herbs, salt and pepper, two tablespoonfuls of fine breadcrumbs, a well beaten egg and sufficient gravy made from the bones and trimmings of the mutton to form the whole into a mass. Shape it into balls about the size of a large walnut and roll them well in breadcrumbs. Put four ounces of fat into a fryingpan, make it hot, add one tablespoonful of ground onions, one-fourth tablespoonful each of ground turmeric and chillies, one-half teaspoonful each of ground ginger and peppercorns and one-fourth teaspoonful of ground garlic. Fry these until they color, sprinkling over about one tablespoonful of water. Put in the forcemeat balls, salt to taste and fry until they are brown; pour in one breakfast cupful of mutton broth, cover the pan and simmer over a slow fire for about two hours. Turn the curry on a dish, and serve with a border of boiled rice.
An Anglo-Indian kofta curry filtered through a French-trained hotel kitchen. Most of the work is in the pounding and the spice frying; the long simmer is the part to revise.
- Fry the spices properlyTurmeric and chilli need a minute or two in hot fat to lose their raw dustiness, but turmeric scorches fast and turns bitter. The splash of water is there to keep the pan below frying temperature — add it as soon as the spices darken, and cook until the fat separates out again.
- MuttonTrue mutton (sheep over two years) is rare in American markets. Lamb shoulder or leg gives the right texture; it is milder, so be generous with the pepper and chilli. Ask a halal or Middle Eastern butcher if you want actual mutton.
- The mortarA food processor does this in thirty seconds. Pulse rather than run it continuously, and keep the meat cold, or the fat smears and the balls turn pasty. The recipe wants a pulp, not a coarse grind.
- Two hours is too longWalnut-sized meatballs are cooked through in ten minutes of simmering. Two hours in a cupful of broth will dry them out and break them apart. Twenty-five to thirty minutes, covered, is enough to marry the sauce and the meat.
- "Breakfast cupful"A breakfast cup is roughly 10 fluid ounces, about 1¼ modern cups. With the shorter simmer you may want a little more liquid, since less will cook away.
- Ground onions and garlicThese most likely mean paste rather than powder: onion and garlic pounded wet in the mortar, as in Indian masala practice. Reckon a tablespoon of onion paste as roughly half a small onion, and a quarter teaspoon of garlic paste as about one small clove.
- Fat and chilliesFour ounces is half a cup, more than needed unless you are deep-frying; two to three tablespoons is sufficient. "Ground chillies" here is cayenne or a similar hot red chilli powder; a quarter tablespoon is about ¾ teaspoon, which is assertive but not extreme.
- Sweet herbsThe period shorthand for parsley, thyme and marjoram, sometimes with a little savory. A tablespoon of the mixture, chopped fine.
- YieldTwo pounds of meat gives somewhere between two and three dozen balls, depending on how large you roll them, and serves four to six with rice. Make the gravy from the bones first — the recipe uses it both as the binder and, as broth, for the braising liquid.
Oscar Tschirky's book, published in 1896 while he was maître d'hôtel of the Waldorf, catalogues a large repertoire of dishes, and that included a full shelf of curries. The dish itself is Anglo-Indian: kofta curry, meatballs simmered in a spiced gravy, was a fixture of British Indian domestic cookery and travelled home with returning families through the nineteenth century. What marks this version as a hotel recipe rather than a household one is the vocabulary — forcemeat is the French farce, seasoned pounded meat, the same preparation a Waldorf cook would have used for quenelles — and the fact that the spices are ground and fried individually rather than shaken from a tin of curry powder. Mutton was still the default sheep meat of the period; the shift to young lamb in American markets came later, and it is the main reason a modern cook cannot reproduce the flavor exactly.