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Curry Powder
An ounce of ginger, one of mustard, one of pepper, three of coriander seed, three of turmeric, one-half ounce cardamom, quarter ounce cayenne pepper, quarter ounce cumin seed; pound all fine, sift and cork tight. One tea-spoon of powder is sufficient to season any thing. This is nice for boiled meats and stews. -Mrs. C. Fullington.
A weight-based spice blend rather than a cooked dish, so the only real work is sourcing and grinding. The proportions are worth reading carefully before you commit to a batch.
- Everything is by weightThe ounces are avoirdupois weights, not fluid ounces. Ground spices are light and bulky, so an ounce of coriander is a good deal more than an ounce of turmeric by volume; weigh rather than measure by spoon.
- Batch sizeThe eight ingredients total 10 oz, which yields roughly 2.5 to 3 cups of finished powder. At a teaspoon a dish that is an enormous quantity. Scaling to a quarter or an eighth gives a jar you can finish while it is still fragrant.
- Whole or ground"Pound all fine, sift" assumes whole spices and a mortar. An electric spice or coffee grinder does the same job; sift out the husks, especially from the coriander and cardamom, and regrind the coarse remainder. Pre-ground spices work but give a duller blend.
- Pepper and mustard"Pepper" here is most likely black peppercorns; mustard is whole seed, and yellow or brown both work, brown being sharper. Neither is a substitute for the cayenne, which is the main heat in the mix and is present in a small proportion.
- Turmeric is the backboneThree ounces of turmeric against 10 oz total makes this a yellow, earthy blend in the Anglo-Indian commercial style rather than a hot one. Turmeric is almost always sold already ground since the dried rhizome is very hard to pound.
- Storage"Cork tight" means an airtight jar out of the light. Ground spice blends hold their character about six months; the cayenne and turmeric will keep their colour longer than the coriander and cardamom keep their aroma.
- Using itA teaspoon is a modest seasoning for a stew serving four to six. Because the blend is raw, it benefits from a minute in hot fat or in the pot with the aromatics before liquid goes in; added at the end it tastes chalky.
Pre-mixed curry powder is a British invention rather than an Indian one: cooks in India ground a fresh masala for each dish, while the compounded, shelf-stable powder was worked out for the British market and sold in London from the late eighteenth century onward. It reached American kitchens through imported bottles and through cookbooks that, like this one, gave a house formula so the mistress of the household could grind her own more cheaply. The heavy hand with turmeric and the light one with cayenne are characteristic of that commercial style, which prized colour and a general warm aroma over heat. That the recipe is recommended for boiled meats and stews tells you how it was actually used in an 1880s American kitchen: not to cook an Indian dish, but as a seasoning to lift plain boiled and stewed meat, in the same category as a bottled sauce. The attribution to Mrs. C. Fullington is typical of The Dixie Cook Book, which was assembled from contributed household receipts.