Curried Oysters

History

Curried Oysters is a large dish and an unusual one. A hundred large sea oysters are opened into a basin without losing a drop of their liquor. An onion is fried brown in butter, curry-powder is worked in, and hot water or broth from the stock-pot is added; then the grated meat of a coconut goes in with a few sour tamarinds, or a chopped sour apple if tamarinds cannot be had. The whole simmers until the coconut is tender, is thickened with flour and water, and takes a vegetable marrow and a tomato before the oysters and their liquor and the coconut milk go in at the last. Lemon juice finishes it, and a dish of rice is set opposite it on the table.

Eliza Acton is unusually frank about where the receipt came from. A footnote records that she took it as it stood from a domestic magazine, the season in which she met with it not permitting her to have it tested — so this is one of the few things in her book she did not cook. She closes the receipt itself by reporting that the dish is considered at Madras the *ne plus ultra*, the very height, of Indian cookery.

Madras is as far as the page goes. An earlier version of this note placed the dish on the Coromandel Coast; that word appears nowhere in the book, and the identification was ours rather than hers. That version also described pre-contact South Indian coastal cookery and the substitution of the oyster for local fish by British households in India. Those we learned from popular reference and food-writing sources, and we were unable to locate the evidence they rest on.

Ingredients

• 100 whole large sea-oysters
• fresh butter
• 1 large onion
• 2 1/2 tablespoonsful currie-powder
• hot water or broth
• 1 whole cocoa-nut
• sour tamarinds
• 1 cupful thickening
• salt
• 1 whole or part vegetable marrow
• 2 whole tomata
• 1/2 whole lemon

Instructions

1. Open the oysters into a basin without losing any of their liquor and set aside.
2. Put a lump of fresh butter into a good-sized saucepan and allow it to boil.
3. Add the sliced onion and let it fry in the uncovered pan until it takes on a rich brown colour.
4. Add a bit more butter and the currie-powder, stirring well with a wooden spoon over the fire until the ingredients are well mixed.
5. Gradually add hot water or broth from the stock-pot, stirring as you go.
6. Cover the stewpan and let the whole boil up.
7. Prepare the grated cocoa-nut meat and add it to the stewpan along with the sour tamarinds or chopped sour apple.
8. Let the entire mixture simmer over the fire until the apple or tamarind is dissolved and the cocoa-nut is very tender.
9. Add the cupful of strong flour-and-water thickening and sufficient salt to the currie.
10. Let this boil up for five minutes.
11. Prepare the vegetable marrow (if using) by cutting it into bits and boiling it sufficiently so it requires little further cooking.
12. Add the marrow and tomata (if using) to the stewpan.
13. Add the oysters with all their reserved liquor and the milk of the cocoa-nut (if it is perfectly sweet) to the stewpan.
14. Stir well to combine the oysters with the other ingredients.
15. Let the currie stew gently for a few minutes.
16. Add the strained juice of half a lemon and stir from time to time with a wooden spoon.
17. As soon as the oysters are done enough, serve the currie with a corresponding dish of rice on the opposite side of the table.