Note: I have scaled the measurements above for 2-3 servings, but left the text below as written where I found it, which is scaled for twice that.

To feed about six people, or four hungry children, joint a lean, four-pound bird from a shop run by no more than three butchers and put the pieces in a large, hole-free plastic bag. Throw in six ounces of plain flour, two ounces of mild curry powder, salt, milled black pepper, and some mixed herbs and give the bag a good shake.

Leave the bag alone for awhile and finely slice three medium onions, a pound of mushrooms, and half a pound of good smoked bacon. Fry them together lightly until the onions and bacon have begun to colour and transfer to a large roasting dish or deep-sided baking tray, spreading them evenly over the bottom. Remove the chicken from the bag - the sweet-spiced smell should remind only a very few of you of the Raj - and lay them evenly spaced over the bacon mixture. Now quarter and deseed two oranges and push them into the gaps between the joints and fill the bottom of the pan to about a third of the way up the chicken, with orange juice. The flour will later act as a thickener.

Cover the whole with a lid or some tinfoil and bake in a preheated oven at 190C/375F/Gas 5 for about an hour and a half, then uncover the dish (by this time several neighbours and their collective pets may have gathered round the window, disparate memories pooling in your window box) and give it another 20 minutes in the oven. Remove and assess the sauce. If it seems too thin or too thick, remove the chicken to an ovenproof plate and keep warm while simmering the sauce in the roasting tin on the hob. Add a little more juice to thin or just keep stirring for five or ten minutes to thicken. Serve poured over the joints with basmati rice.

It won't, I promise, be the last time you make this but over subsequent years your thoughts will return to the day you first took the lid off it and everything you felt, said, did, and wore that evening.