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Curried Oysters
Peel and cut into thin slices a moderate sized Spanish onion; put a lump of butter into a stewpan, place it over the fire, and when the butter boils put in the onion and fry it until nicely browned. Next stir in three tablespoonfuls of curry powder, add more butter if necessary, and mix well over the fire. Pour in gradually a sufficient quantity of broth, put the lid on the pan and let the whole boil up. Grate a cocoanut and peel and chop a very sour apple, or, instead of the apple, a few tamarinds would be best if they could be obtained; put them into the stewpan with the other ingredients, and boil the whole slowly until the cocoanut is tender. Mix two tablespoonfuls of flour smooth with a little water, and stir it into the above mixture; season to taste with salt, stir and boil for five minutes. Put two or three tomatoes, freed from their seeds, into a stewpan with a hundred oysters and their liquor, also the milk of the cocoanut. Stir them occasionally, and stew slowly for a few minutes. Add this to the former mixture. Squeeze in the juice of half a lemon, turn the curry on to a hot dish, garnish with croutons of fried bread, or sippets of toast, and serve with a separate dish of rice.
A late-Victorian hotel curry, written for a kitchen with a standing stock pot and a boy to grate coconuts. The quantities are banquet scale and the oysters are the one thing that will not forgive you.
- Oysters last, and brieflyA hundred shucked oysters need two to three minutes in barely simmering liquid — just until the edges ruffle. "Stew slowly for a few minutes" was generous even then; longer and they shrink to erasers and weep water into the sauce.
- ScaleA hundred oysters with their liquor is roughly 4-5 lb of shucked meat and will serve twelve to sixteen. Quartering the whole recipe (25 oysters, a small onion, 2 tsp curry powder, 1/2 tbsp flour) gives a sensible four servings.
- The broth is unmeasured"A sufficient quantity" means enough to loosen the fried onion and curry paste into a gravy that will later take the oyster liquor and coconut water. For the full recipe start with about a quart of chicken or veal stock and hold back — the oysters release a great deal of liquid.
- Milk of the cocoanutThis most likely means the thin water inside the shell rather than an extraction from the grated flesh, since the flesh is already used separately; either way it is not canned coconut milk. If you use a fresh coconut, reserve that water for the oyster pan and use the grated flesh as directed. Canned coconut milk in place of both will make a much richer, less brothy curry.
- Curry powderThree tablespoons of period curry powder — mostly turmeric, coriander, fenugreek and a little cayenne — is mild by current standards. Fry it in the butter until it smells toasted rather than raw; that step, not the quantity, is where the flavour comes from.
- Tamarind or sour appleThe souring agent is not optional; it balances the coconut. A tablespoon or two of tamarind concentrate, or a Bramley-type cooking apple, both work. Ordinary sweet dessert apples do not.
- SippetsSippets are small triangles or fingers of toast, cut to fit round the edge of the dish. Croutons of fried bread do the same job. Both are there for texture against a soft curry.
- Spanish onionA large mild onion; what is sold today as a Spanish onion is close to the same thing. Slice thin and brown it properly — this and the coconut carry most of the sauce's sweetness.
Curry reached the American hotel dining room by way of the British table rather than directly from India, and this recipe shows its lineage plainly: fried onion, commercial curry powder, a flour-thickened gravy, coconut, an acid fruit, and rice served in a separate dish. That formula was standardised in English cookery books through the middle of the nineteenth century and travelled to New York largely unchanged. What makes it a Waldorf dish is the oyster. New York in the 1890s ate oysters in extraordinary quantity — they were cheap, local, and shucked by the barrel — and hotel kitchens worked them into every European idiom available, curried, scalloped, en brochette, and in patties. Oscar Tschirky, who compiled this book while maître d'hôtel of the Waldorf, was collecting the working repertoire of a large brigade, which is why the yields run to a hundred oysters and why the broth quantity is left to the cook's judgement.