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Curry
Miss Brokovski.
To make curry with rabbit, chicken, or any other meat, flour the meat and fry it a nice light brown; fry also two large onions in the same way; mix a tablespoonful of curry powder, and a small quantity of cayenne in a tea cup, with warm water to the consistency of cream and cover every part of the meat with the mixture; have ready some nice stock or thin gravy; put all together into a stew-pan, and let it stew gently for twenty minutes; before serving slice two or three apples, let them stew away; this addition is thought to be a great improvement, as it makes the curry milder; rice to be boiled very dry and served around the dish,
A straightforward Anglo-Indian braise from a contributor's notebook, written for a cook who already knows what a stew-pan does. A few points need translating.
- The hinge: bloom the curry powderThe paste of curry powder and warm water is meant to coat the fried meat and go into the pan with it, not to be stirred in at the end. Commercial curry powder is raw ground spice and tastes dusty unless it cooks in fat and liquid for a good while; frying the paste briefly in the pan drippings before the stock goes in is the single change that most improves the dish.
- Twenty minutes is for tender cuts onlyChicken pieces or a young rabbit will be done in twenty minutes of gentle stewing. Older rabbit, mutton, or stewing beef needs an hour and a half to two hours at a bare simmer, with the stock topped up as it reduces.
- "A tablespoonful" in a Victorian book"A tablespoonful" in a nineteenth-century book -- Spoon measures were not standardised, and a period tablespoon may have run somewhat larger than the modern 15 ml, perhaps nearer 18-20 ml, though books varied. For 1.5-2 lb of meat, start with a modern tablespoon and taste; curry powders vary enormously in strength and salt.
- Cayenne"A small quantity" is left to the cook's judgement, and the strength of the curry powder used will decide how much is wanted. A quarter teaspoon is plenty for most palates, and the recipe can be made without it.
- Stock or thin gravyEnough to come roughly halfway up the meat, about 1.5-2 cups. "Thin gravy" here means unthickened meat broth, not the thickened sauce the word now suggests; the flour on the meat supplies all the body needed.
- The applesUse a cooking apple that collapses, such as Bramley, McIntosh, or any soft-fleshed variety. Added in the last ten minutes they break down into the sauce and take the edge off the spice, which is exactly the effect the recipe is after. Firm eating apples stay in lumps.
- "Boiled very dry"The rice is served as a border round the dish, so it must be separate-grained and not sticky. Basmati, rinsed until the water runs clear, absorption-cooked and left covered off the heat for ten minutes, gives what is wanted.
- YieldWith the 1.5-2 lb of meat assumed above, this will serve about four with rice. Scale the curry powder by taste rather than strictly by weight of meat.
Curry recipes appear in a great many English-language household books of the later nineteenth century, and they descend from the Anglo-Indian kitchens of the East India Company era, when returning officials and their cooks brought back a taste for spiced stews and commercial curry powder came to be sold ready-blended. The version here is thoroughly domesticated: the meat is floured and browned like any English stew, the sauce is built on stock, and the apple - a common addition in British curry recipes of the period, sometimes said to have entered by way of chutney's sweetness - is offered as a way of making the dish milder rather than more interesting. Rabbit heads the list of meats, and curry in these books often served much the same practical purpose as hash: a way of turning ordinary or leftover meat into something that tasted new. The attribution to Miss Brokovski is typical of *The Home Cook Book*, which was compiled from contributions by named women and sold in aid of a hospital, so each recipe carries a small piece of its donor's reputation with it.