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Mullagatawny Soup
This is a soup of any kind flavoured with curry-powder. It is highly stimulating, gives tone and vigour to the digestive organs, and is frequently acceptable in very hot or very cold climates. Nevertheless, we do not recommend its frequent use, though it may occasionally be resorted to on festive occasions. If a plain curry or mullagatawny soup is preferred, mix the powder with an equal quantity of browned flour and a little cold stock or broth, which may be put in with the meat of the soup half an hour before serving. Soft meats, fowl, etc., may be wholly stewed in this curry stock, though the finer sorts of curries will not admit of this, mangoes, tamarinds, etc., taking only a few minutes; but the experienced cook will readily distinguish and determine on such additions. With a plain curry there should be a flavouring of lemon-acid just before serving. The housekeeper will readily understand that any good stock soup may be converted into mullagatawny or curry soup, but as it usually occupies considerable space in every cookery-book, we add a few examples, pointing from the simple soup above mentioned to more expensive dishes.
This is less a fixed recipe than a method: take any good stock soup and turn it into curry soup. The proportions are left to the cook, so the notes below fill in what the original assumes you already know.
- The hinge: cook out the powderCurry powder stirred in at the last minute tastes raw and dusty. The half hour of simmering specified here is the whole point of the method, and the flour-and-cold-stock slurry exists so the powder disperses without lumping.
- Browned flourFlour toasted dry in a pan or a slow oven until nut-coloured, a standard Victorian thickener kept in a jar. It thickens less powerfully than raw flour, so expect a light body rather than a gravy. A roux of equal butter and flour cooked to the same colour behaves similarly.
- QuantitiesNone are given. For four to six servings, a working starting point is about a tablespoon each of curry powder and browned flour per quart of stock, slaked with a few spoonfuls of cold stock before it goes in.
- Lemon-acidCitric acid crystals, sold by grocers and chemists at the time as a cheap standing substitute for lemon juice. The juice of half a lemon per quart does the same job. The text has it go in just before serving.
- "Soft meats, fowl"Meats that will go tender in the time the soup simmers: chicken, rabbit, veal, or already-cooked scraps. Anything needing long braising should be cooked before it meets the curry stock, since the spices flatten over a two-hour simmer.
- Mangoes and tamarindsHere the sour green mango and tamarind pulp of Anglo-Indian cookery, not ripe dessert mango. Both are added near the end, as the text says, and both carry acid, so scale back the lemon if you use them.
- Curry powder is not a fixed thingVictorian commercial powders generally leaned on turmeric, coriander and fenugreek, and tended to be milder than present-day blends, though recipes varied. A modern Madras blend is hotter and more assertive; taste as you build rather than measuring to the old proportions.
- ServingPlain boiled rice, served separately or spooned into the bowl, was the usual accompaniment, though the text does not mention it.
The name comes from the Tamil milagu tannir, pepper water, a thin spiced broth of southern India that British households in the subcontinent thickened, enriched with stock and meat, and brought home as a soup course. By the time Cassell's was compiled it was thoroughly naturalised in the English repertoire, which is why the entry can begin so casually with "any good stock soup" and complain that curry "usually occupies considerable space in every cookery-book." The odd little warning against frequent use belongs to a period medical view of spice as a stimulant acting on the digestion, to be taken like a tonic rather than daily; the same reasoning shows up in Victorian advice on mustard, pepper and strong condiments generally.