“Oyster sauce” recalls a quaint simile I once heard a bookmaker make use of. He was talking of one of his aristocratic debtors, whom he described as sure to pay up, if you could only get hold of him. “But mark you,” continued the layer of odds, “he’s just about as easy to get hold of as the oyster in the sauce, at one of our moonicipal banquets!” But return we to our coriander seeds. There is absolutely no reason why the frugal housewife in this country should not make her own curry powder from day to day, as it may be required. Here is an average Indian recipe; but it must be remembered that in the gorgeous East tastes vary as much as elsewhere, and that Bengal, Bombay, Madras (including Burmah), Ceylon, and the Straits Settlements, have all different methods of preparing a curry.
A few coriander and cumin seeds—according to taste—eight peppercorns, a small piece of turmeric, and one dried chili, all pounded together.
When making the curry mixture, take a piece of the heart of a cabbage, the size of a hen’s egg; chop it fine and add one sour apple in thin slices the size of a Keswick codlin, the juice of a medium-sized lemon, a salt-spoonful of black pepper, and a tablespoonful of the above curry powder. Mix all well together; then take six medium-sized onions which have been chopped small and fried a delicate brown, a clove of garlic, also chopped small, two ounces of fresh butter, two ounces of flour, and one pint of beef gravy. Boil up this lot (which commences with the onions), and when boiling stir in the rest of the mixture. Let it all simmer down, and then add the solid part of the curry, i.e. the meat, cut in portions not larger than two inches square.
Remember, O frugal housewife, that the turmeric portion of the entertainment should be added with a niggard hand. “Too much turmeric” is the fault which is found with most curries made in England. I remember, when a boy, that there was an idea rooted in my mind that curries were made with Doctor Gregory’s Powder, an unsavoury drug with which we were periodically regaled by the head nurse; and there was always a fierce conflict at the dinner-table when the bill-of-fare included this (as we supposed) physic-al terror. But it was simply the taste of turmeric to which we took exception.
What is Turmeric? A plant in cultivation all over India, whose tubers yield a deep yellow powder of a resinous nature. This resinous powder is sold in lumps, and is largely used for adulterating mustard; just as inferior anchovy sauce is principally composed of Armenian Bole, the deep red powder with which the actor makes up his countenance. Turmeric is also used medicinally in Hindustan, but not this side of Suez, although in chemistry it affords an infallible test for the presence of alkalies. The Coriander has become naturalised in parts of England, but is more used on the Continent. Our confectioners put the seeds in cakes and buns, also comfits, and in Germany, Norway, Sweden, and (I fancy) Russia, they figure in household bread. In the south of England, coriander and caraway seeds are sown side by side, and crops of each are obtained in alternate years. The coriander seed, too, is largely used with that of the caraway and the cumin, for making the liqueur known as Kümmel.
Cumin is mentioned in Scripture as something particularly nice. The seeds are sweet-savoured, something like those of the caraway, but more potent. In Germany they put them into bread, and the Dutch use them to flavour their cheeses. The seeds we get in England come principally from Sicily and Malta.
And now that my readers know all about the ingredients of curry-powder—it is assumed that no analysis of the chili, the ginger-root, or the peppercorn, is needed—let them emulate the pupils of Mr. Wackford Squeers, and “go and do it.”
Another Recipe for curry-powder includes fenugreek, cardamoms, allspice, and cloves; but I verily believe that this was the powder used in that abominable Parsee hell-broth, above alluded to, so it should be cautiously approached, if at all. “Fenugreek” sounds evil; and I should say a curry compounded of the above ingredients would taste like a “Number One” pick-me-up. Yet another recipe (Doctor Kitchener’s) specifies six ounces of coriander seed, five ounces of turmeric (ower muckle, I’m of opeenion) two ounces each of black pepper and mustard seed (ochone!), half an ounce of cumin seed, half an ounce of cinnamon (donner und blitzen!), and one ounce of lesser cardamoms. All these things are to be placed in a cool oven, kept therein one night, and pounded in a marble mortar next morning, preparatory to being rubbed through a sieve. “Kitchener” sounds like a good cooking name; but, with all due respect, I am not going to recommend his curry-powder.
A Malay curry is made with blanched almonds, which should be fried in butter till lightly browned. Then pound them to a paste with a sliced onion and some thin lemon-rind. Curry powder and gravy are added, and a small quantity of cream. The Malays curry all sorts of fish, flesh, and fowl, including the young shoots of the bamboo—and nice tender, succulent morsels they are. At a hotel overlooking the harbour of Point de Galle, Ceylon, “run,” at the time of the writer’s visit, by a most convivial and enterprising Yankee, a canning concocter of all sorts of “slings” and “cocktails,” there used to be quite a plethora of curries in the bill-of-fare. But for a prawn curry there is no place like the City of Palaces. And the reason for this super-excellence is that the prawns—but that story had, perhaps, best remain untold.
Curried Locusts formed one of the most eccentric dishes ever tasted by the writer. There had come upon us that day a plague of these all-devouring insects. A few billions called on us, in our kitchen gardens, in passing; and whilst they ate up every green thing—including the newly-painted wheelbarrow, and the regimental standard, which had been incautiously left out of doors—our faithful blacks managed to capture several impis of the marauding scuts, in revenge; and the mess-cook made a right savoury plât of their hind-quarters.
It is criminal to serve curry during the entrée period of dinner. And it is worse form still to hand it round after gooseberry tart and cream, and trifle, as I have seen done at one great house. In the land of its birth, the spicy pottage invariably precedes the sweets. Nubbee Bux marches solemnly round with the mixture, in a deep dish, and is succeeded by Ram Lal with the rice. And in the Madras Presidency, where dry curry is served as well as the other brand, there is a procession of three brown attendants. Highly-seasoned dishes at the commencement of a long meal are a mistake; and this is one of the reasons why I prefer the middle cut of a plain-boiled Tay salmon, or the tit-bit of a lordly turbot, or a flake or two of a Grimsby cod, to a sole Normande, or a red mullet stewed with garlic, mushrooms, and inferior claret. I have even met homard à l’Américaine, during the fish course, at the special request of a well-known Duke. The soup, too, eaten at a large dinner should be as plain as possible; the edge being fairly taken off the appetite by such concoctions as bisque, bouillabaisse, and mulligatawny—all savoury and tasty dishes, but each a meal in itself. Then I maintain that to curry whitebait is wrong; partly because curry should on no account be served before roast and boiled, and partly because the flavour of the whitebait is too delicate for the fish to be clad in spices and onions. The lesson which all dinner-givers ought to have learnt from the Ancient Romans—the first people on record who went in for æsthetic cookery—is that highly-seasoned and well-peppered dishes should figure at the end, and not the commencement of a banquet. Here follows a list of some of the productions of Nature which it is allowable to curry.