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Breakfast Dal
Mrs. Keer.
Sift, pick and wash a quarter pound Dal.
Chop fine a small onion* and fry it in a piece of butter the size of a nut; add the washed Dal, three-quarters pint water, and a level teaspoonful salt. Let all boil up quickly, then set back to boil gently for half an hour longer, Stir occasionally.
Send to table in a vegetable dish, and at the same time, in a similar dish, serve plain boiled rice light and dry, the grains soft yet each one separate.
Quarter pound Dal and quarter pound Rice are enough for two persons. Total cost 4½ cents.
BENGAL SOUP (WITHOUT MEAT.) Mrs. Keer.
Proceed as for "Breakfast Dal," doubling the amount of onion, salt and water and adding pepper. Time to cook-one hour. *To persons objecting to the flavor of onion in a breakfast dish it is necessary to say that they need not fear to follow the recipe, as the modicum of well-cooked onion prescribed is in reality hardly appreciable to smell or taste, the dal apparently absorbing and counteracting its flavor.
A plain Anglo-Indian dal, written for a cook who already knew what "Dal" meant and how long her particular lentil took. Two details need pinning down: which pulse, and how much water.
- Which dalThe recipe does not say, and the answer changes the timing. Split red lentils (masoor) collapse to a puree in 25-30 minutes as written; split pigeon pea (toor/arhar) or chana dal will still be firm at half an hour and want 45-60 minutes, or a soak first. If you want the half-hour timing to hold, use red lentils.
- A quarter pound of dalAbout 1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons of dry split lentils. With rice alongside it does feed two as a breakfast dish, though modern appetites may find it a light one.
- Three-quarters of a pintGenuinely ambiguous. If the book is using the imperial pint, that is 15 fl oz (about 1 3/4 cups); if the US pint, 12 fl oz (1 1/2 cups). Either gives a thick dal rather than a soup. Keep a little hot water at hand and loosen it as it thickens.
- Butter the size of a nutProbably a walnut, the nut most often named in recipes of this kind, which would be roughly a tablespoon; given the quantity it is there to soften the onion rather than to enrich the dish.
- SaltA level teaspoon in a quarter pound of dry lentils is a fair amount of salt for the finished volume. Add half at the start and correct at the end, particularly if you serve it over unsalted rice.
- Boil up, then set back"Set back" means moving the pan to a cooler part of the range: bring it to a boil, then drop to a bare simmer. A hard boil for thirty minutes will scorch the bottom and boil the pan dry.
- Bengal SoupThe variation doubles onion, salt and water and adds pepper for an hour's cooking. Doubling the salt as well as the water keeps the concentration the same, so it is not a mistake, but taste before serving.
- What it lacks by modern tasteThere is no turmeric, cumin, ginger, chilli or finishing tempering of spices in hot fat. The dish is complete as written and deliberately mild; if you add a tadka you are cooking a different, later recipe.
This pair of recipes belongs to the Anglo-Indian household cookery associated with British families in Bengal, which reached wider print through memoirs and community cookbooks. Dal is both the split pulse itself and the dish made from it, and dal with plain rice is an everyday staple of much of the subcontinent -- eaten at any hour, though British residents in India commonly treated it as a breakfast dish alongside things like kedgeree. The costing in cents indicates a North American readership, and the heading "WITHOUT MEAT" suggests the appeal was partly economy: four and a half cents for two people. The apologetic footnote about onion suggests something about the intended audience as well as the recipe; onion at breakfast was evidently an objection Mrs. Keer expected to meet.