A Cassereet, an East India Dish

History

A Cassereet is a short, plain stew. Two pounds of lamb chops, or mutton in their place, go into a stewpan covered with water or gravy and seasoned with nothing but pepper and salt. When the chops are half done the fat is carefully skimmed off and two tablespoonfuls of cassereet are stirred into the gravy, which is left unthickened; the pan then finishes gently, and rice is sent to table with it.

The dish turns entirely on that one ingredient, and the book defines it in its own glossary of unfamiliar terms: cassereet is "a sauce prepared from the cassada, a West Indian plant," with the warning that it must be used with moderation. Cassada is cassava, and the sauce is the dark, boiled-down reduction of its juice — a West Indian preparation, not an Indian one, and one the book plainly expects a London cook to buy rather than make.

That leaves the receipt's own title sitting at an angle to its contents. It is called an East India dish and served with rice in the Indian manner, and the one thing that gives it its flavor comes from the other side of the world. The book does not remark on this, and offers no account of how a West Indian sauce came to stand in an English kitchen for the taste of an Indian stew.

An earlier version of this note read cassereet as a British-made curry powder and said its derivation was undocumented. Both were wrong, and the book's own glossary says so. What that version offered about the spice trade behind such blends we learned from popular reference and food-writing sources, and we were unable to locate the evidence they rest on.

Ingredients

• 2 pounds lamb chops
• water or gravy
• pepper and salt
• 2 tablespoons cassereet
• rice

Instructions

1. Take two pounds of lamb chops, or mutton may be substituted, and place them in a stewpan.
2. Cover with water or gravy and season only with pepper and salt.
3. When the chops are half done, carefully skim off the fat and add two table spoonsful of cassereet.
4. Stir it in the gravy, which should not be thickened, and finish stewing gently till done enough.
5. Rice should accompany this dish.