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Mysore Curry
Cut into quarter-inch squares one small onion, two shallots, a seeded green pepper, a seeded ripe red tomato, one peeled and cored apple and one bean sound garlic. Melt a heavy tablespoon butter in saucepan, add the above articles, sprinkle over two tablespoons flour, lightly stir, then add two pounds raw mutton from the leg part cut in three-quarter-inch square pieces. Stir all well together, brown for four minutes, stirring well meanwhile, add a tablespoon curry powder and stir well again.
Moisten with a pint water and tie in bunch a leek, branch each celery and parsley, a sprig thyme, bay leaf and clove. Add to pan with rind of half a sound lemon and half pint fresh or canned peas, season with good teaspoon salt, half teaspoon pepper, and mix well. Cover pan, then set in oven for an hour, being careful to mix once in a while, remove, take up bouquet and lemon rind, dress curry on a hot dish, arrange a rice around and serve with Indian Chutney, etc.
A braise dressed up as a curry: the aromatics are cut fine, the meat is floured and browned in the same pan, and the whole thing goes into the oven for an hour. The instructions are complete except for the one number that matters, the oven heat.
- Oven temperatureNo setting is given. A covered braise of this kind sits comfortably at 325-350F, where the liquid holds at a bare simmer for the full hour. Much hotter and the pint of water will reduce further than the dish wants before the mutton is tender.
- "One bean sound garlic"A single sound clove, not a whole head; "bean" appears to describe the size of the piece, and "sound" means unblemished.
- MeasuresA pint is 2 cups, half a pint 1 cup. A "heavy tablespoon" of butter is a generous one, roughly 20 g. The teaspoon of salt is right for 2 lb of meat plus vegetables.
- The muttonMutton from the leg is rarely sold in the United States. Lamb leg or shoulder works, and shoulder is the better choice for a braise; an hour at 325F will get 3/4-inch lamb cubes tender, while true mutton wants closer to two hours.
- Hold back the peasPeas added at the start of a one-hour braise collapse into grey pulp. Add fresh or frozen peas in the last 8-10 minutes, canned peas in the last 2, purely to heat through.
- Bloom the curry powderStirring the powder into the hot fat before the water goes in is the step that carries the dish. Give it a full minute over the heat until it smells toasted rather than dusty, and keep it moving so the flour and spice do not scorch.
- The bouquet and lemon rindLeek, celery, parsley, thyme, bay and a single clove tied in a bundle, plus a wide strip of lemon zest with no white pith. Both come out before serving, so tie the bundle with string long enough to fish out.
- Yield and servingTwo pounds of meat feeds four generously. "Arrange a rice around" means a ring of plain boiled long-grain rice on a hot platter with the curry spooned into the centre; chutney goes alongside, not on top.
Mysore, in southern India, was a princely state under British suzerainty, with its own ruler and administration, when this book was compiled, and its name attached itself to a good many Anglo-Indian dishes with no fixed recipe behind them. What is on the page is a European braise: a floured roux, a tied bouquet garni, and commercial curry powder measured out by the tablespoon. Curry powder itself is usually described as a British trade invention, a fixed blend sold ready-mixed so that a cook in London or New York could produce something curry-flavoured without a masala ground to order for each dish, which is what an Indian kitchen would actually do. The apple and the sweetened-souring pair of apple and lemon rind are hallmarks of the Anglo-Indian style, generally traced to nineteenth-century British household cookery rather than to any Indian original, and the mutton is a reminder that in Britain, at least, until well into the twentieth century mature sheep, not lamb, was the ordinary meat for a slow-cooked dish of this kind.