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Curry of Mutton, Tartare
Cut two pounds fresh neck of mutton into pieces one inch square. Heat a tablespoon leaf lard in a large saucepan, add the mutton and let gently brown all over for fifteen minutes, turning the pieces quite frequently meanwhile. Drain on a sieve and remove all the fat. Return the mutton to the pan, dredge with two tablespoons of flour and stir well for a minute; moisten with a pint and a half hot water, mix for a minute longer and as it comes to a boil add one whole, medium onion with one clove stuck in it, one medium carrot cut in half, one bean sound garlic. Season with a teaspoon salt and half teaspoon white pepper; then add one bay leaf, one sprig thyme, one saltspoon sage, one minced apple and a heavy teaspoon curry powder. Mix all well together, cover the pan and let boil very slowly for one hour and a quarter. Prepare a rice for curries. Arrange the rice crown-shape on a large hot dish. Pick up all the pieces of mutton with a fork and place in the centre of the crown. Reduce the sauce on the range to half the quantity, then press through a cheesecloth over the mutton and serve.
A straightforward braise in the Anglo-Indian style, with the sauce strained rather than served with the vegetables in it. A few of the measures and cuts need translating.
- Neck of muttonMutton neck is a hard-working, well-marbled cut that wants the full slow hour and a quarter. Lamb shoulder or lamb neck is the usual substitute; if using lamb, start checking for tenderness at about 50 minutes, since it cooks faster than mature sheep.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon. The sage here is a background note, not a lead flavor.
- Pint and a halfThree cups of hot water. This is meant to be reduced by half at the end, so do not top it up during the braise unless the pan is going dry.
- "One bean sound garlic"An awkward or garbled rendering, most likely meaning a single sound (unblemished) clove of garlic. Since nothing tells you to chop it, one whole clove is the reasonable reading.
- Leaf lardRendered fat from around the kidneys, prized for its neutral flavor. Ordinary lard, or a tablespoon of any neutral oil, does the same job of browning the meat.
- Draining the fatThe step that is easy to skip and worth doing. Mutton throws a great deal of fat in fifteen minutes of browning; if it stays in the pan the flour absorbs it and the strained sauce comes out greasy rather than glossy.
- Curry powderA commercial blend, mild by modern standards and often heavy on turmeric and coriander. A heaping teaspoon in three cups of liquid is restrained; taste at the reduction stage and add more if it reads as thin.
- Straining the saucePressing through cheesecloth pushes the softened onion, carrot and apple into the sauce as body while holding back the bay, thyme and clove. A fine sieve with a ladle does the same work.
- Rice for curriesThe recipe cross-refers to a separate preparation elsewhere in the book. Any plainly boiled, well-drained rice with separate grains will serve. Mold it into a ring on the platter and pile the meat in the center.
- YieldTwo pounds of bone-in neck feeds four; three if the neck is bony. Allow about a cup of cooked rice per person.
This comes from Alexander Filippini's The International Cook Book, a large compendium drawing recipes from many countries and treating "curry" as a technique adaptable to any meat. The "Tartare" label is one of the place-name tags that turn up frequently in professional cookery of the period; the word itself derives from the Tatar peoples of Central Asia, though nothing in the method here is specifically Tatar. What the recipe documents is the Anglo-Indian curry as it had settled into Western professional kitchens: a French brown braise built on a roux, flavored with commercial curry powder, sweetened with apple, and finished by straining the sauce smooth in the classical manner. The minced apple is a familiar marker of that lineage, appearing in British curry recipes from the middle of the nineteenth century onward as a way of rounding out blended curry powders that lacked the fresh aromatics of an Indian kitchen.