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Monday 11 June 2012

Anglo-Indian cooking influences

In her book The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy, Hannah Glasse details how to make a curry dish:


She also mentions the source of Piccalilli:
To make India pickle. TO a gallon of vinegar one pound of garlick, and three quarters of a pound of long pepper, a pint of mustard seed, one pound of ginger, and two ounces of tumerick; the garlick must be laid in salt three days, then wip'd clean and dry'd in the sun; the long pepper broke, and the mustard seed bruised; mix all together in the vinegar, then take two large hard cabbages, and two cauliflowers, cut them in quarters, and salt them well; let them lie three days, and dry them in the sun. N.B. The ginger must lie twenty four hours in salt and water, then cut small and laid in salt three days.
There is also a way to make paco lilla, or Indian pickle, the same the mangos come over in.


There is a dish for Indian boiled fowl:
To make a pellow the Indian way. TAKE three pounds of rice, pick and wash it very clean, put into a cullender, and let it drain very dry; take three quarters of a pound of butter, and put it into a pan over a slow fire till it melts, then put in the rice and cover it over very close, that it may keep the stream in; add to it a little salt, some whole pepper, half a dozen blades of mace, and a few cloves. You must put it in a little water to keep it from burning, then stir it up very often, and let it stew till the rice is soft. Boil two fowls, and a fine piece of bacon or about two pounds weight as common, cut the bacon in two pieces, lay it in the dish with the fowls, cover it over with the rice, and garnish it with about half a dozen hard eggs and a dozen of onions whole fried and very brown. NOTE, This is the true Indian way of dressing them.


Two other dishes seem to have found their way across the oceans to England.
Firstly khichri, a rice and bean or rice and lentil dish, which seems to have been adapted by Scottish colonists by the adding of smoked haddock which later became kedgeree, a staple of Victorian breakfast tables.
Secondly a pepper broth called milagu tanni, which in the West had tumeric and meat added to become mulligatawny.

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