Home › Soup › Mulligatawny Soup
Mulligatawny Soup
Cut four apples, three or four nice onions, two carrots, two turnips, and one head of choice celery into three quarts of liquor, in which one or two fowls have been boiled, allow it to come to a good boil and then place it where it will simmer for about one-half pour; add four tablespoonfuls of currie powder and one of flour; mix all well together and let it boil for three or four minutes, pass through a colander, and serve with small pieces of roast chicken and boiled rice in a separate dish, or small squares of toasted or fried bread.
A curried vegetable-and-apple broth built on chicken cooking liquor, thickened lightly and strained. Two things in the original text need decoding before you start.
- "One-half pour"A printer's error for "one-half hour." Simmer the vegetables about 30 minutes, until the carrot and turnip are completely soft, since everything goes through a colander afterwards.
- "Liquor"The broth left from poaching a chicken, not a spirit. Three quarts is a generous amount; the carcass and liquid from one 4-5 lb bird plus enough water or unsalted stock to make 3 quarts works. Skim the fat before adding the vegetables.
- Curry powderFour tablespoons in three quarts is assertive, though commercial blends of the period generally leaned on turmeric and coriander and were probably milder than many blends sold today. Add half, taste after it has cooked, and adjust. The recipe directs three or four minutes' boiling, which helps cook out the raw spice.
- The flourOne tablespoon in three quarts is a seasoning, not a thickener. Whisk it with a little cold broth or soften it in a spoonful of butter before it goes in, or it will lump and the lumps will be caught by the colander.
- Straining"Pass through a colander" may mean no more than straining the solids out, but with vegetables cooked that soft it more likely means pushing them through with a ladle or wooden spoon, giving a coarse purée rather than a clear broth. A food mill gives a similar result; a blender gives a smoother soup than intended.
- Apples and onionsUse a tart cooking apple such as Bramley or Granny Smith. Peel and core them; the original assumes you know this.
- Yield and serviceThree quarts serves roughly eight to twelve as a first course. The rice and chicken are passed separately so each person adds their own; the recipe gives no reason, though it does keep the rice from swelling in the pot.
Mulligatawny is an Anglo-Indian dish, its name generally traced to the Tamil milagu tannir, roughly "pepper water" — the thin, hot, tamarind-and-pepper broth of southern India. British households in India adapted it into something closer to a European soup, adding stock, thickening, and eventually apple, and the dish travelled back to Britain and America with returning families through the nineteenth century. By the time it reaches a general American household book like this one it has become a use for leftovers: the liquor from boiled fowl, the trimmings of roast chicken, and a tin of commercial curry powder, a stocked pantry item rather than a blend ground at home. The apple is the clearest sign of the anglicised version — it appears in almost no Indian antecedent, and it is often said to supply a sweet-sour note in place of the tamarind of the original.