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Duckling Curry, Lucknow
Cut in two-inch-long julienne strips one each small carrot, turnip and seeded green pepper, a celery root, bean garlic and peeled and cored apple. Place all these articles on a plate with two peeled, seeded, fresh-chopped red tomatoes. Singe, cut the head and feet off a tender four-chopped red tomatoes. Singe, cut the head and feet off a tender fourpound duckling, neatly draw and wipe, then cut in twelve equal pieces. Melt a good tablespoon butter in saucepan, add duckling and gently brown for fifteen minutes, being careful to turn the pieces once in a while. Sprinkle in a tablespoon flour and good teaspoon curry powder, mix well with spatula for three minutes, moisten with pint broth and season with a heavy teaspoon salt, half teaspoon pepper and saltspoon grated nutmeg. Tie in a bunch a sprig thyme, bay leaf, clove, sprig tarragon, branch parsley and piece lemon rind, then add to duck with all the waiting vegetables. Thoroughly mix, cover pan, cook on range for ten minutes, then set in oven for forty-five minutes. Remove, take up bouquet, scoop out white part of a fresh cocoanut, place in mortar with two tablespoons cream, then pound to a paste, strain through cheesecloth into saucepan and mix well while heating for two minutes. Dress duck on a hot dish, arrange a boiled rice around, and serve with Bombay duck, chutney, etc., separately.
A French-trained kitchen's version of an Indian curry: the duck is browned, floured and braised like a fricassee, with coconut cream stirred in at the end. Two lines of the original text are garbled by a printer's or scanner's repetition, and one ingredient is a mistranscription.
- The garbled lines"bean garlic" is a bean of garlic, meaning one clove. The phrase "fresh-chopped red tomatoes. Singe, cut the head and feet off a tender four-chopped red tomatoes" is a duplicated line: read it as two peeled, seeded, chopped tomatoes, then a tender four-pound duckling.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given. For a covered braise of this kind something around 325-350F will hold the bare simmer the recipe wants for the forty-five minutes.
- Small measuresA saltspoon is about a quarter teaspoon. A "heavy" or "good" spoonful means generously rounded rather than level. The heavy teaspoon of salt most likely assumes an unsalted homemade broth, so cut it back if using commercial stock.
- Jointing the birdTwelve pieces from a four-pound duckling means legs and thighs separated, wings, and the breast cut across into several sections, with the back chopped in two. Modern ducks come drawn and singed already; trim the heavy pockets of fat at the neck and cavity or the sauce will be greasy.
- Skim the fatDuck renders far more fat than the single tablespoon of butter suggests. Pour off most of it after the fifteen-minute browning, before the flour goes in, and skim again before finishing the sauce.
- The coconut creamThe pounded-and-strained coconut is the hinge of the dish; it is a home-made coconut cream. A mortar is not necessary, a blender does it faster, but the two minutes of heating at the end is the limit. Coconut cream held at a boil in a floured sauce will separate and turn oily. Canned unsweetened coconut cream is a fair substitute for one fresh nut.
- Curry powderCommercial curry powders of the period were generally mild blends. Taste after the three minutes of frying and add more if your powder is weak, but keep frying it in the fat before the broth goes in, otherwise it tastes raw.
- Bombay duckNot duck at all: it is bummalo, a small fish dried hard and salted, sold in Indian groceries and usually grilled or fried briefly before serving. It is pungent and optional. Mango chutney and plain boiled long-grain rice cover the rest of the garnish.
- YieldA four-pound duck in twelve pieces serves four generously with rice.
The International Cook Book was compiled by Alexander Filippini, long associated with Delmonico's in New York, and it attaches city names to a great many dishes. Lucknow was a natural label for a courtly curry: the Awadhi kitchens of the Nawabs were famous in English-language writing for rich, slow-braised, aromatic cooking, and duck and fowl dishes figured in that reputation. What is on the page, though, is Anglo-French technique wearing Indian dress: flour-thickened braise, a bouquet garni of thyme, bay, tarragon and lemon rind, coconut cream folded in at the last minute, and the curry powder that British grocers had been blending and exporting since the late eighteenth century. Bombay duck served separately, along with chutney, was a standard accompaniment to curry on late-Victorian and Edwardian tables on both sides of the Atlantic; the name is generally traced to the fish being carried on the Bombay mail trains, though that explanation is traditional rather than documented.