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Indian Curry of Fowl
(Used in England.) Mix 2 teaspoonfuls of curry powder with 2 of flour, cut up and fry a chicken in butter or dripping, with an onion and some parsley, add the curry and flour, 1 1/2 cups of stock, and 1 cup of rice or grated cocoanut, wet with the juice of a lemon. Stir and serve.
A compressed Anglo-Indian curry of the kind that appeared in English households by the end of the nineteenth century. The instructions assume a cook who already knows that a jointed chicken must simmer, so the crucial step is the one the text leaves out.
- Cook the bird properly"Stir and serve" describes the finish, not the cooking. After the stock goes in, cover and simmer the joints 30-40 minutes until the meat is tender and reaches 165F at the thigh; browning in butter alone will not cook a jointed chicken through.
- The rice or coconut is a choice, not a garnishRead it as either 1 cup of grated coconut stirred into the sauce, or rice served alongside. A cup of raw rice dropped into 1 1/2 cups of stock with the chicken will seize the pan and scorch. If you use coconut, unsweetened desiccated or fresh grated, not the sweetened baking kind.
- Curry powder of the periodCommercial curry powder of the period was typically turmeric-heavy and milder than most blends sold today. Two teaspoons for a whole chicken is restrained; taste and add more if your blend is gentle.
- Bloom the spiceFry the curry powder and flour in the fat with the onion for a minute before the stock goes in. Raw curry powder stirred into liquid tastes dusty, and the flour needs the fat to thicken cleanly.
- Stock quantityA cup and a half barely covers a jointed bird. Add enough stock or water to come halfway up the pieces, then reduce at the end if the sauce is thin.
- DrippingBeef or bacon dripping was the everyday frying fat of the period and gives a heavier, savoury result. Butter or a neutral oil works; butter alone will brown too fast, so mix it with oil.
- Lemon at the endThe lemon juice most likely wets the coconut or rice, though the text does not say. Add it off the heat so the sharpness survives.
- YieldA 3-4 lb chicken feeds four with rice.
Curry reached the English kitchen through the East India Company and by the 1800s had settled into a familiar domestic formula: meat browned with onion, a spoonful of shop-bought curry powder, flour to thicken, stock, and a sour note at the end. The note "(Used in England.)" marks this as a curry not as cooked in India but as the English had made it their own, with a flour-thickened gravy uncharacteristic of Indian cooking and the pre-mixed powder that stood in for a household's own grinding of spices. Commercial curry powders were advertised in Britain from the late eighteenth century onward, and by the time this book was compiled they were a pantry staple. The grated coconut and the lemon juice, standing where tamarind or lime might have gone, are the touches that most mark it as a colonial adaptation.