Blanche Hulton’s Bindaloo Recipe

This recipe was published just before the Second World War, but Blanche transcribed it from her grandfather’s recipes that he wrote down while commussioned in the East India Company. During his twenty three years in India he hobnobbed with Rajahs and Regiments, and when he finally made it back to England his curry dinner parties quickly became famous.

Bindaloo is much the same as Vindaloo, a Portuguese curry. The word “vindaloo” is believed to come of the Portuguese Vin D’albo (wine and garlic). The Portuguese conquered Goa in the 16th century, and decided though the food was good, they wanted it more like it was back home (like the British in India): spicy meat, sweet and sour elements, and lots of vinegar. They had to persuade the locals to make vinegar, and grow tomatoes, and potatoes, and cashews, and chillies…
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Dr Kitchener’s Curry Powder, c.1827

As far back as the Regency we were lazy cooks. We didn’t want to make our own curry powder everytime we wanted a curry. We either wanted to buy it premade (and risk it being full of sawdust and the rest, padded out by a dodgy grocer) or to get the cook to run up a batch and let it go slowly stale and tasteless. Or to buy a takeaway, which was also an option open to us. You don’t see that in so many Regency Romances, do you? Lady Emilia Heatherton chowing down on a takeaway vindaloo after a night out at the assembly rooms?

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I completly flaked on the rest of the jams, I’m afraid, but I’m back with curries now. Nice and warming.

Curry

Three pounds of veal my darling girl prepares,
And chops it nicely into little squares;
Five onions next prures the little minx
(The biggest are the best, her Samiwel thinks),
And Epping butter nearly half a pound,
And stews them in a pan until they’re brown’d.
What’s next my dexterous little girl will do?
She pops the meat into the savoury stew,
With curry-powder table-spoonfuls three,
And milk a pint (the richest that may be),
And, when the dish has stewed for half an hour,
A lemon’s ready juice she’ll o’er it pour.
Then, bless her! Then she gives the luscious pot
A very gentle boil – and serves quite hot.
PS – Beef, mutton, rabbit, if you wish,
Lobsters, or prawns, or any kind fish,
Are fit to make a CURRY. ‘Tis, when done,
A dish for Emperors to feed upon.

William Makepeace Thackeray

People in the UK tend to assume curry appeared in the 1950s, but the first recipe appears in Hannah Glasse’s The Art of Cookery, Made Plain and Easy in 1747. The price of spices was already on its way down as trade grew, which meant it was available to people other than the very rich. Better trade meant faster trade, which meant fresher spice, which meant stronger flavours, which meant you didn’t need as much (it’s worth bearing in mind with older recipes that qunatities are obsurdly high, due to the fact most of the spices were stale. You don’t want to follow them word for word!).

Curry powder put in an appearance in the late eighteenth century, a uniquely British invention. Mrs Beeton gives a recipe for it, but more money could be saved by buying pre-made curry powder. The first curry house opened in 1810. Queen Victoria loved the stuff, William Makepeace Thackeray wrote a poem to it (see above), and we invented half a dozen of our own and exported them back.

We’ll start near the beginning today, though, with Hannah Glasse’s “To Make a Currey the Indian Way”

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