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Vendali Curry
Cut into half-inch-square pieces an onion, two shallots, a seedless green pepper, seeded tomato, cored apple and bean sound garlic. Melt a heavy tablesoon butter in a saucepan, add above articles, sprinkle over two tablespoons flour, lightly stir, then add a pound each raw lean veal and pork cut into one-inch squares, and half a sound, seeded egg-plant cut in three-quarter-inch squares. Season with teaspoon curry powder, a saltspoon salt and half teaspoon pepper, mix well, cook for ten minutes, frequently stirring meanwhile, and moisten with a pint of broth or water. Tie in a bunch two branches parsley, a branch chervil, sprig thyme, bay leaf, clove, add to pan, mix well, cover pan and boil for five minutes, then set in oven for one hour, being careful to mix once in a while. Remove, take up bouquet, add white fibres (meat) of a medium, grated, fresh cocoanut, mix well, cook for six minutes, dress curry on a hot dish, arrange a boiled rice around and serve.
A French-trained cook's curry: a braise built like a fricassée, with curry powder used as a seasoning rather than a base. The text is riddled with typesetting slips, and the oven stage is given no temperature.
- The typos"a heavy tablesoon butter" is a generous tablespoon; "bean sound garlic" is "a bean of sound garlic", "bean" being an older term for a clove or bean-sized piece of garlic, so what is missing is the word "of". "White fibres (meat) of a cocoanut" means the white flesh, grated.
- Oven heatNone is given. A covered braise of this size wants a moderate oven, 325-350F, for the hour specified; hotter and the pint of liquid will reduce away before the veal is tender.
- SaltspoonA quarter teaspoon. For two pounds of meat plus vegetables that is very light seasoning by modern taste, so check and correct at the end.
- Curry powderOne teaspoon for two pounds of meat gives only a faint tint of spice. Commercial powders vary enormously in heat and salt; taste yours and scale up if you want the dish to read as curry.
- The flourTwo tablespoons sprinkled over the vegetables and cooked ten minutes before the liquid goes in is a roux made in place. Keep stirring during that stage or the flour scorches on the pan bottom and the sauce turns bitter.
- Fresh coconutGrated fresh coconut added at the end thickens the sauce and adds sweetness. Frozen grated coconut is the nearest substitute; sweetened desiccated coconut is not, and dried unsweetened flakes should be soaked in a little hot broth first. Six minutes is what the recipe allows.
- The bouquetParsley, chervil, thyme, bay and a clove tied in a bundle. Chervil is the one item you may have to skip; leave it out rather than substituting tarragon, which will dominate.
- AubergineModern varieties are generally much less bitter and need no salting. Half a one in three-quarter-inch dice will largely break down into the sauce over an hour.
- YieldTwo pounds of meat plus vegetables serves six with the rice, which the recipe rightly says should be plain boiled and ringed around the dish.
Alexander Filippini cooked at Delmonico's in New York, and this is a curry as that kind of kitchen understood it: a French ragoût of veal and pork, thickened with a roux, perfumed with a bouquet garni, and given a teaspoon of curry powder and some grated coconut to justify the name. The title may be an anglicised spelling of vindaloo, the Goan dish of pork with garlic and vinegar whose name descends from the Portuguese carne de vinha d'alhos, though that reading is speculative, and the connection here would at best be a borrowed word rather than a borrowed method: there is no vinegar and no chilli. What the recipe really documents is how curry powder travelled through Britain to American hotel cooking as a single blended seasoning, bought in a tin, treated like paprika or mace and dropped into an otherwise entirely European braise.