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Kabob, Mutton Curry, Darjeel
Cut into one-inch-square pieces one and a quarter pounds lean raw mutton. Melt one tablespoon butter in a saucepan; add the mutton and gently brown it for ten minutes; add two light tablespoons flour, one finely chopped onion, two finely chopped shallots, one bean crushed garlic, one small turnip cut into small dices, one sound cored apple cut the same way, one seedless, finely chopped green pepper, one finely chopped chili, one good-sized, ripe, seedless, finely chopped tomato, and half tablespoon curry powder. Mix the whole well together while browning for six minutes. Moisten with a pint white broth or hot water. Season with half tablespoon salt, half saltspoon cayenne pepper, one saltspoon grated nutmeg, adding one piece lemon rind. Mix all well together and let cook gently for forty-five minutes, lightly mixing once in a while. Remove the lemon rind; dress half pound hot boiled rice, on a hot dish in crown form. Pour the curry into the centre, sprinkle a little fine chopped parsley over and serve with chutney.
A straightforward braised mutton curry in the Anglo-Indian manner, thickened with flour and sweetened with apple and turnip. Nothing here is difficult; the archaic measures and the fat-to-flour balance are what need attention.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon. So the cayenne is about 1/8 teaspoon and the nutmeg 1/4 teaspoon.
- "One bean garlic"Filippini uses "bean" for a piece about the size of a bean, roughly one small to medium clove, crushed.
- White brothAn unbrowned stock, usually veal or chicken, from the standard stockpot. Any light chicken stock works; the hot water alternative given in the original will produce a noticeably thinner result.
- Fat and flourOne tablespoon of butter will not carry two tablespoons of flour once the mutton has taken up some of it. Expect the flour to catch unless the meat has rendered fat, or increase the butter slightly; the six-minute browning of the flour and vegetables is where the sauce gets its body and colour.
- Curry powderHalf a tablespoon of a 1900s commercial curry powder in a pint of liquid is mild by current standards, and old powders leaned heavily on turmeric, coriander and fenugreek. Bloom it in the fat during that six-minute stage rather than adding it to the liquid, and taste before deciding whether to add more.
- Mutton and timingForty-five minutes suits true mutton cut small. If you are using lamb shoulder, check at 35 minutes; if the mutton is older or the dice larger, it may want 20 minutes more. The meat should give completely under a fork.
- Lemon rindUse a strip of peel with no pith, and remove it as directed — left in, it turns the sauce bitter over three quarters of an hour.
- ServingHalf a pound of boiled rice pressed into a ring is a little over a cup; if the half pound is weighed dry before boiling, it will yield closer to three cups cooked. The whole dish serves three, or four at a table with other courses. Chutney here means a sweet-sour mango type, the standard Anglo-Indian accompaniment.
Alexander Filippini, long the chef at Delmonico's in New York, assembled The International Cook Book (1906) as a survey of national dishes for American households, and its curries come by way of the Anglo-Indian kitchen rather than any Indian one. The tells are unmistakable: flour as a thickener, a commercial curry powder used as a single seasoning rather than a spice mixture built in the pan, and the apple and turnip that turn up in British curry recipes through the nineteenth century. "Kabob" here has drifted from its usual meaning of grilled skewered meat and is used loosely for a cubed-meat dish; "Darjeel" appears to be a shortening of Darjeeling, attached as a regional flourish rather than pointing to any documented dish from that district. The crown of rice with the curry poured into the centre was a common restaurant presentation of the period, and it survives on menus still.