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Mutton, Indienne
One pound lean shoulder of mutton, one medium carrot, one turnip, one medium onion, one leek, rind of one lemon and one green pepper. Cut the above articles in quarter-inch square pieces, place in a saucepan with one ounce butter, set on fire and brown for ten minutes, stirring meanwhile; then add one teaspoon curry powder, one teaspoon salt, two tablespoons Worcestershire sauce, three quarts water and one pound cleaned raw mutton bones and boil forty minutes; add two ounces raw rice, three slices peeled eggplant, cut in small squares, three peeled, crushed tomatoes, and boil forty-five minutes more.
Chop up together finely a half ounce cooked lean ham, one bean garlic, two branches parsley, one branch chervil, and add to soup. Boil for ten minutes more, and remove bones. Dilute four tablespoons arrow-root with two tablespoons sherry, juice of half a lemon, two tablespoons milk, and add it to the soup; mix well, cook for ten minutes more, pour soup into a tureen and serve.
Despite the meat-first title, this is a soup — essentially a mulligatawny, built on a browned mirepoix and mutton bones and finished with arrowroot. A few of its instructions read oddly to a modern eye.
- "Set on fire"This means set the pan on the fire, i.e. over the heat — not flambé. Brown the diced meat and vegetables in the butter over medium-high heat for the full ten minutes; that colour is most of the soup's flavour.
- Mutton and bonesTrue mutton (sheep over two years) is rare in most markets. Lamb shoulder works and cooks faster; ask the butcher for a pound of lamb neck or shank bones for the stock element. If you use lamb, the total simmering time can be trimmed at the front end.
- "One bean garlic"A single clove; the phrasing looks like a literal rendering of the French gousse d'ail. It goes in late, chopped raw with the ham and herbs, though the recipe then boils it ten minutes more, so it will not stay fully raw-sharp.
- Lemon rindPare the zest in strips with no white pith, and fish it out before serving along with the bones. Left in and diced as directed, it will be bitter in the spoon.
- The arrowroot is the hingeFour tablespoons is a heavy hand — it will set the soup near gravy thickness. Slake it thoroughly in the cold sherry, lemon juice and milk before it goes in, add it in a thin stream with the soup at a bare simmer, and cook only until it clears. Boiled hard, arrowroot thins back out and goes slimy. Start with two tablespoons if you want a soup rather than a pottage.
- Rice and reductionTwo ounces of raw rice simmering for a little over an hour will break down completely and thicken the pot on its own. Three quarts of water reduces substantially over the roughly hour and three-quarters of boiling called for; keep it at a gentle simmer, lid ajar, and top up if it drops below about two quarts.
- Curry powderOne teaspoon in three quarts is very mild by current taste, and period commercial curry powders were typically turmeric-heavy, with coriander, cumin and fenugreek among the usual additions, though blends varied. Bloom it in the fat with the vegetables for a minute before the liquid goes in, and adjust upward.
- YieldSix to eight generous bowls. Two tablespoons of Worcestershire and a teaspoon of salt is the whole seasoning as written; taste and correct at the end, after reduction.
À l'indienne in a professional kitchen of this period meant one thing: curry powder, usually with rice and often with apple or coconut in the sweeter versions. The dish is a restaurant cook's mulligatawny, a soup whose name is generally traced to the Tamil miḷagu-taṇṇīr, "pepper water," and which reached European tables through the Anglo-Indian households of the East India Company before being absorbed into the French repertoire and, from there, into American hotel cooking. The construction here is thoroughly French rather than Indian — a browned brunoise, bones for body, a garnish of ham and herbs chopped together in the manner of a hachis, and a liaison of arrowroot slaked with sherry — with the curry powder doing the work of signalling the East. Mutton was still the ordinary sheep meat of the era; lamb was the luxury, and shoulder the cut a thrifty kitchen turned into soup.