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Sumatra Lamb Curry
Cut a neck of lamb in one-inch-square pieces and keep on a plate. Mince rather finely a medium onion, two shallots, a bean garlic, peeled and seeded red tomato, green pepper, sound apple, half a small, peeled eggplant and a branch celery. Melt an ounce butter in a saucepan, add lamb and brown for six minutes, stirring once in a while; dredge in two light tablespoons flour, briskly stir while browning for three minutes, then add all vegetables with a tablespoon good curry powder. Stir well, moisten with a pint water, season with two teaspoons salt and a half teaspoon black pepper. Add one saltspoon each powdered bay leaf and thyme, a piece of lemon rind, mix all well together and let simmer for twenty minutes. Add four tablespoons cooked, green peas and six small pickled onions, mix well, cover pan, then set in oven for forty-five minutes. Remove, dress rice curry on a hot dish, crown-like in centre, and serve with chutney.
A straightforward braise disguised by period shorthand. The main things to settle are the measurements the book assumes you know and the oven temperature it never gives.
- Saltspoon and "bean garlic"A saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so bay and thyme go in at that amount each. A "bean" of garlic is a single clove.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given because the range had none. A covered pan of lamb going 45 minutes wants a moderate oven, 325-350F, enough to hold a bare simmer without reducing the pint of water to paste.
- Neck of lambBone-in neck is still the right cut and still cheap where a butcher will cut it, but it is rarely on supermarket shelves. Shoulder cut in one-inch pieces behaves the same; boneless leg does not, being too lean for an hour of moist heat.
- Bloom the curry powderThe powder goes in with the vegetables before any liquid, and that ordering matters. Give it a full minute in the fat with the flour and aromatics so the ground spice loses its raw, dusty edge; adding it to the water instead leaves a flat curry.
- The apple and eggplantBoth are thickeners as much as flavourings here. They collapse entirely over the simmer and the oven time, which is the intention, so mince them as directed rather than dicing them to keep their shape.
- Peas and pickled onionsCooked peas held in the oven for 45 minutes will be olive-drab and soft. If colour matters, stir them in during the last five minutes; the pickled onions can go in at the point the book says, since they are meant to soften and give up vinegar to the sauce.
- Lemon rindUse a wide strip of peel with no white pith, and fish it out before serving along with any stray bay. A whole piece is easy to find; grated zest is not, and turns bitter over the long cook.
- "Rice curry" and yieldNo yield is given; the quantities suggest something like four servings. "Rice curry ... crown-like in centre" describes rice moulded into a crown or ring on the hot platter - the book places it in the centre of the dish - with the curry served around or spooned into it; it is a presentation of the period rather than a separate recipe. Whether the rice itself was plainly boiled or seasoned with curry the text does not say.
The International Cook Book belongs to the era when American hotel cookery collected dishes by nationality and printed them side by side. Sumatra was Dutch-administered when this book appeared, and the Netherlands' colonial kitchen is one possible route by which a curry bearing that island's name reached a New York chef. The apple is suggestive: sweet fruit stirred into a flour-thickened curry sauce is a European convention, common in British and Dutch cooking of the period and not a feature of Sumatran cooking itself, where heat and sourness come from chillies, tamarind and coconut. Curry powder as a single pre-blended tablespoon is the same story - a commercial European product standing in for a spice paste ground fresh. What the recipe really documents is not Sumatra but how a professional Western kitchen of the period rendered the idea of Sumatra: a familiar brown braise, seasoned with a shop-bought blend and served with chutney and rice.