NOTE ABOUT “CURRIES” IN
“SATURDAY REVIEW,” OCTOBER 22, 1887.

Everybody who likes Curry, and who can get it (the pamphlet, not theCurry), should invest in a little pamphlet by “Daniel Santiagoe,son of Francis Daniel, butler and fiddler, of Colombo, Ceylon, and theCeylon Court, Royal Jubilee Exhibition, Liverpool.” It is written indelightful pigeon-English (or whatever other bird may be more appropriateto Ceylon's isle), is quite unpretentious, avows the author's verylegitimate, and, indeed, laudable desire to “make a small fortune” byits sale, and contains admirable receipts. Mr. Santiagoe is much lesscynical than the apocryphal Mrs. Glasse. He says, after recommendingthe more excellent way of the Curry Stone, “The best and easyway is to buy from your respected grocers, which, I should say, oughtto be of two colours—one is brown and the other is yellow, and the redis cayenne pepper (if required, hot curries).” He is a little plaintiveabout mulligatawny. “Why English people always spell this wordwrong? Everybody knows this—mollagoo, ‘pepper;’ tanney, ‘water.’”So the reformers who call it “mulligatunny” are just as bad as wedevotees of mumpsimus and mulligatawny ourselves. We note withspecial pleasure a receipt for “chicken moley”—evidently the samegenus as that “mollet” which puzzled Mrs. Clarke. And all the prescriptionsare interesting. “Maldive fish” seems to take the place of“Bombay duck” in these southern regions, and the number of VegetableCurries is particularly noteworthy. Nobody need think from thespecimens we have given that Mr. Santiagoe is unintelligible. HisEnglish may be “pigeon,” but it is a much more easily digestibletongue than the high and mighty gobble-gobble of some of our ownprofessors of style and matter.

[True copy from “Saturday Review.”]