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Curried Pork
Remove the skin and most of the fat from two and a half pounds of pork and chop it into small thin slices, which place in a saucepan with a little butter, frying them for a few minutes, then add four onions cut up into small pieces and fried, a tablespoonful each of curry-powder and paste, and add a little salt and pepper to taste. When thoroughly mixed, pour in two breakfast cupfuls of water or stock, place the pan over the fire, and, as soon as it boils, remove to one side and let it cook gently for from three quarters of an hour to an hour, then take out the pieces of meat, place them on a dish and reduce the liquor to half its original quantity, after which pour it over the meat, and serve garnished with a border of well boiled rice, or, if preferable, the rice may be served separately.
A straightforward braise that needs little updating, though two of Oscar's measurements and one of his ingredients want explaining.
- Breakfast cupfulA breakfast cup is the large cup of a Victorian tea service, generally reckoned at 8 to 10 fluid ounces. Two of them means roughly 2 to 2 1/2 cups of stock, enough to barely cover the meat.
- Curry-powder and pasteThese were two distinct commercial products in 1896: a dry blend and a wetter, oilier concentrate. British firms such as Crosse & Blackwell sold both, though Oscar names no brand and gives no formula. If you can find only powder, use a tablespoon of it and add a teaspoon of tomato paste plus a splash of vinegar for the sharpness the paste supplied.
- The cut"Two and a half pounds of pork" with skin and most of the fat removed points to shoulder or a fresh leg. Shoulder is the better choice; loin sliced thin will be dry and stringy after an hour of simmering.
- Fry the spice, not just the meatThe hinge is the step where curry powder and paste meet hot butter and onion before the liquid goes in. A minute or two of frying there cooks the raw edge off the ground spice; skip it and the sauce tastes dusty no matter how long it simmers.
- Heat control"Remove to one side" means shifting the pan off the direct heat of a coal range to a cooler part of the top. On a modern hob, bring to a boil and drop to the lowest setting that keeps a lazy bubble going, or hold it in a 300F oven.
- The reductionLifting the meat out and boiling the liquor down by half concentrates it into something closer to a sauce than a broth. Do it hard and fast, and taste for salt afterwards — reducing doubles whatever seasoning is already there.
- YieldServes four to six with rice. Long-grain rice, plainly boiled and drained, is the likeliest reading of 'well boiled'; it is meant to be dry and separate, not creamy.
Oscar Tschirky's The Cook Book by "Oscar" of the Waldorf (1896) reflects a New York hotel kitchen working in the French manner but stocked with the products of British colonial trade, and curry sits comfortably in that world. By the 1890s ready-blended curry powder had long been a shelf staple in English and American kitchens, sold so that the cook never had to grind a spice; the accompanying "curry paste" was a parallel commercial product, richer and more pungent, and recipes of the period sometimes call for both. The dish itself is less an Indian preparation than an Anglo-American one -- a plain braise of pork, onion and stock seasoned with a bottled blend, served with a ring of boiled rice. Pork is the less usual choice: period curries more often went to mutton, veal or cooked chicken.