Page:McCosh, John - Advice to Officers in India (1856).djvu/182

 got of very good quality, and game in great variety—wild hogs and venison,quails, partridges, pheasants and peacocks. Some keep a native game-killer on purpose, and have a plentiful supply at a moderate rate. In fact, there is no lack of good fare, and the stranger must be careful and abstemious till he becomes acclimatised.

As a curry is a standing dish on every table, it may be well to have an idea of its constituents. It is a most heterogeneous compound of ginger, cloves, and cinnamon, cardamums, coriander, and cayennepepper, onions, garlic, turmeric, and even assafœtida, all in quantities consistent with peculiar tastes, ground to a powder by a pestle and mortar, and made into a paste with gee (clarified butter) or mustard oil,and stewed up with apiece of kid or a fowl. It is, therefore, well adapted to stimulate the appetite after a hot day, when most articles of diet are not cared for.

Almost all the cooking utensils are made of copper, tinned on the inside. It is customary to have the tinning renewed once a month, but from the native custom of scouring the vessels with sand in cleansing them, the tin is often worn off before the month is over, and the food cooked is apt to be tainted by copper to a hurtful extent. Acid preparations are not the only things that act rapidly on copper if allowed to remian in them, but oily ones also, and none more