A Bengal Currie

History

A Bengal Currie begins with onions and fat. Three large onions are sliced and fried in two ounces of butter and lifted out. Three more onions and a small clove of garlic are pounded together and mixed smoothly with a dessertspoonful of the best pale turmeric, a teaspoonful of powdered ginger, one of salt and one of cayenne pepper; the butter the onions were fried in goes back in with half a cupful of good gravy, and the whole stews about ten minutes before the meat joins it.

Turmeric and ginger carry the dish, and butter and a pre-made meat gravy carry the fat and the liquid. That combination is what makes the receipt legible as an English household version of an Indian dish: the spices are kept, and the cooking medium is the one a London kitchen already had standing by.

What the receipt cannot show is the dish it came from. Eliza Acton gives no Bengali source, names no cook, and makes no comparison. An earlier version of this note described the *bhuna* technique of frying spices in oil, said mustard oil had been replaced with butter, and judged the result a damping-down of a Bengali original for the Victorian palate. There is no such original on the page to compare against. Those accounts we learned from popular reference and food-writing sources, and we were unable to locate the evidence they rest on.

Ingredients

• 3 large onions
• 2 oz. butter
• 3 large onions
• 1 small clove garlic
• 1 dessertspoonful turmeric
• 1 teaspoonful powdered ginger
• 1 teaspoonful salt
• 1 teaspoonful cayenne pepper
• 1/2 cupful good gravy
• 1/2 pint gravy
• 1 1/2 lb. mutton or other meat

Instructions

1. Slice and fry three large onions in two ounces of butter until done.
2. Lift the fried onions from the pan and set them aside.
3. Pound together three other large onions and a small clove of garlic until smooth.
4. Mix the pounded onion and garlic paste with a dessertspoonful of pale turmeric, a teaspoonful each of powdered ginger, salt, and cayenne pepper.
5. Put this spice mixture into a stewpan and add the butter in which the onions were fried, along with half a cupful of good gravy.
6. Let the mixture stew gently for about ten minutes, taking care it does not burn.
7. Stir in the reserved fried onions and add half a pint more of gravy.
8. Add the pound and a half of meat, free from bone and fat.
9. Simmer gently for an hour or longer until the meat is perfectly tender.