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Clear Mulligatawny
Ingredients.
One quart of good Stock.
Two ounces of Butter.
One sliced Onion.
Two sliced Tomatoes.
Three tablespoonfuls of Curry Paste.
Two green Chillies cut fine.
The book gives quantities only, on the assumption that a cook already knows how a clear soup is built. The method implied is a simple one: sweat the aromatics in the butter, work in the paste, moisten with the stock, simmer, then strain until the soup runs clear.
- The hinge: it must be strained"Clear" is the whole point, though the book gives no method. The onion, tomato and paste are flavouring agents, not body; everything is passed through a fine sieve or muslin at the end and the fat lifted off. Skim the butter carefully or the surface will be slicked.
- Quart of stockAn imperial quart is 40 fl oz, about 5 cups. The book says only "good Stock"; a clarified beef or veal stock would suit, and a light chicken stock also works. If the stock is not already clear, clarify it before you start, because the curry paste will hide nothing.
- Curry paste, not curry sauceVictorian curry paste was a stiff commercial preparation of ground spice, vinegar and oil, closer to a modern Madras or Bengal curry paste than to a Thai one. Three tablespoons is a lot in a quart of liquid; start with two, simmer, and correct.
- Cooking the pasteThe book gives no method. Softening the onion in the butter, then adding the tomato and the paste and letting it cook two or three minutes before the stock goes in, avoids the dusty taste of raw paste stirred straight into hot stock.
- Simmering timeThe book gives no time; a bare simmer of half an hour or so should draw out the flavour and settle the solids. Boiling hard will cloud the soup and undo the straining.
- The green chilliesThe two green chillies are the heat, and it is variable. The recipe says to cut them fine; adding them whole or slit instead gives more control, and they can be fished out when the soup is hot enough for your taste.
- Finishing and servingA squeeze of lemon and salt at the end lifts it; a spoonful of plain boiled rice is the traditional garnish, handed separately so it does not cloud the bowl. The quart serves four to six as a first course.
Mulligatawny is among the most persistent of the Anglo-Indian soups, its name generally traced to the Tamil mi u5agu ta u47 u47 u2br, "pepper water" a thin, sour, peppery broth of southern India. British households in India and then at home rebuilt it on meat stock, and by the later nineteenth century it had split into two lines: a thick, floury, apple-and-rice version served in clubs and dining rooms, and this clear one, treated as a curried consomm u9 and placed among the made soups of a professional kitchen. That it appears here at all, with commercial curry paste taken for granted, shows how far the dish had been absorbed into British high-class cookery: the spicing came out of a jar, and the technique straining, degreasing, clarity was largely French.