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Mullagatawny Soup, Fowl
Cut up a large fowl, place the trimmings in a saucepan with two quarts of water, a knuckle of veal, and half a pound of minced ham, a few black peppercorns, and some allspice. As soon as it boils, skim the soup, then allow it to simmer for an hour or so, and strain. Take some of the nicest pieces of meat, and fry them to a delicate brown colour with butter and three medium-sized onions, finely sliced length-wise. Now add this to the stock, place the pot on the fire, and bring the whole to a boil; skim it, and allow it to simmer for fully half an hour. Mix two table-spoonfuls of "Empress" curry-powder with a little arrowroot, a tea-spoonful of salt, and a sufficiency of milk or water to bring the whole to the desired degree of consistency; add this to the soup, and simmer gently until the meat is quite tender. Strain the soup, add a little lemon-juice to taste, and serve with boiled rice.
A late-Victorian Anglo-Indian soup built in two stages: a rich stock from the carcass and veal, then the good meat browned with onions and finished with curry and arrowroot. A few of its assumptions need translating.
- The fowlA Victorian "large fowl" was an older, mature bird rather than a young roaster, tougher and generally more flavourful than a supermarket chicken. A 4-5 lb chicken works; if you can find a stewing hen or capon, the stock will be better and it will need longer than the times given here.
- Knuckle of vealThe joint end of the veal shank, closest today to a sawn veal marrow bone or a piece of shank sold for osso buco. It is there chiefly for gelatine and body, though it adds flavour too. A pound of veal or pork bones, or a split pig's trotter, does much the same job.
- "Empress" curry-powderEvidently a branded curry powder of the period, quoted by name; it is not on the market now. Any good Madras-style curry powder substitutes; two tablespoons for two quarts is a mild-to-moderate heat by modern taste, so adjust. Frying the powder briefly with the onions and butter before it meets the liquid gives more depth than stirring it in raw.
- Arrowroot, and the hingeArrowroot thickens at a lower temperature than flour and thins out again if held at a hard boil. Slake it cold with the milk or water, add it off the heat or at a bare tremble, and keep the pot below a simmer afterwards. If you use milk, curdling is a real risk once the lemon juice goes in defer to water or stock unless you want the richer version, in which case add the lemon at the table.
- Quantities left open"A sufficiency of milk or water" is the cook's judgement: start with half a cup for the slurry and thin the finished soup to a light cream. "Half an hour" and "simmer until quite tender" together mean roughly 45-60 minutes of gentle cooking for the browned meat.
- Straining at the endTaken literally this leaves a clear curried broth. If you want the meat in the bowl, lift out the meat and onion, strain the liquid, and return the meat to the tureen. The stock bones and the ham are discarded at the first straining, near the start.
- Serving and yieldTwo quarts of water, after reduction, gives roughly six to eight servings. Here the rice is boiled separately and either spooned into the plate first or handed round; cooking it in the soup would cloud and thicken it.
Mulligatawny is the most thoroughly naturalised of the Anglo-Indian dishes, and its name is generally traced to the Tamil milagu tannir, "pepper water" — the thin, sour, peppery broth of southern India. What returning Company officials and their cooks brought back bore little resemblance to it: the British version acquired meat, stock, onions, a thickener and often apple or cream, turning a digestive broth into a substantial first course. It is placed among the fowl soups rather than in any Indian section, which is itself telling — by the 1890s mulligatawny was simply a British soup, made from a bought tin of curry powder like the branded "Empress" named here. The lemon juice at the end is the one surviving trace of the sourness that defined the original.