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Potage Veal, Indienne
Cut in small square pieces half pound raw lean veal, one medium red carrot, one white medium onion, two well-cleaned leeks, one medium green pepper and three branches crisp, white celery. Place these in a large saucepan with half an ounce clarified butter and brown for fifteen minutes, stirring meanwhile with a wooden spoon. Moisten with three quarts hot water and two gills tomato sauce; add one pound knuckle of veal, one tablespoon salt, half teaspoon white pepper, one teaspoon curry powder and two tablespoons Worcestershire sauce. Mix well and gently boil for forty-five minutes, then add three ounces raw rice, three slices peeled eggplant and two peeled and cored apples cut in small squares, lightly mix, then boil for forty minutes longer. Remove bone, skim the fat from the surface, pour into a hot tureen and serve.
A large French-style curry soup built on veal shank, closer to a mulligatawny than to anything served in India. It makes a great deal of soup, so scale it unless you are feeding a crowd.
- YieldThree quarts of liquid plus rice, vegetables and meat gives roughly ten generous servings. Halving the whole recipe works without adjustment.
- Gills and ouncesA gill is half a cup, so two gills of tomato sauce is one cup. Half an ounce of clarified butter is about a tablespoon; three ounces of raw rice is a scant half cup.
- Knuckle of vealThe shank end of the leg; cross-cut bone-in shank, sold today as osso buco, is the closest modern equivalent. The marrow and connective tissue are what give the broth body. A single meaty piece around a pound is right.
- The riceForty minutes of boiling will collapse long-grain rice into the soup and thicken it noticeably. If you want distinct grains, add the rice in the last fifteen minutes instead.
- Curry powderOne teaspoon across three quarts is very restrained by current taste, and commercial curry powders of the period may well have been milder than many jars sold now. Add it to the browning vegetables rather than the liquid so it toasts, and adjust at the end.
- WorcestershireTwo tablespoons is assertive and salty. Combined with a full tablespoon of salt, this will be a well-seasoned soup — hold back some salt until after the long simmer and the reduction it brings.
- EggplantThree slices means peeled rounds; dice them so they disappear into the soup rather than sitting in sheets. Over forty minutes they will largely break down and help thicken the soup.
- BrowningFifteen minutes over moderate heat in a wide pan, stirring, is the flavor base for the whole pot. Aim for real color on the veal and onion, not just softening.
- SkimmingVeal shank throws a good deal of fat and scum. Skim during the first simmer as well as at the end, or chill the soup and lift the fat off solid.
Potage à l'indienne is a standing category in the French professional repertoire — any soup carrying curry powder and usually rice earns the name — and its ancestor is the Anglo-Indian mulligatawny that reached European kitchens through British colonial cooking in the nineteenth century. What is telling here is how thoroughly the dish has been naturalized: leeks, celery, a knuckle of veal and a spoonful of Worcestershire sauce, with a single teaspoon of curry powder standing in for the whole of India. The apples are often taken to be a mulligatawny inheritance, a sweet-sour note that may have survived the journey when little else did. Books of this kind, assembling the world's cooking for American hotel and household kitchens in the early 1900s, seem often to have filed such dishes under a geographic label while cooking them squarely in the French manner their chefs had trained in.