Moisten
A mild word to be understood in the sense of Mrs. Gamp, who wished to have the gin-bottle near her on the chimneypiece in order that she might moisten her lips when so dispoged. To moisten is to put upon meat in a stewpan as much liquid-be it water or broth-as will stew it.
MULLAGATAWNY has been already discussed in the article on Gallimawfrey. It may be described as a cock-a-leekie without the leeks and the prunes, but with rice instead, and with spices, which are of the curry class.
Cut down a fowl and boil it for half an hour in two quarts of water, with two apples, four onions and a clove of garlic, which have been cut to dice and fried in butter. Then take a curry powder consisting of coriander, cassia, pepper, and turmeric; mix it with some rice-flour; stir it into the fowl broth; and let all simmer till the soup is smooth and thick as cream. Flavour it with the juice of a lemon; pass it through a strainer, to get rid of onion shreds; serve the fowl and soup in a tureen-and rice either apart, which is the better way, or in the soup.
Two entries run together here: a one-line definition of a kitchen verb, followed by a working mulligatawny. The soup is sound, but the quantities are given loosely and the cooking time for the bird is optimistic.
- "Moisten" as a techniqueThe definition is the useful part: add only as much liquid as will stew the meat, not enough to boil it. In a modern stewpan that means liquid coming roughly halfway up the meat, topped up only if it threatens to dry.
- The fowlA Victorian "fowl" generally meant a mature bird rather than a young chicken: tougher, and fuller in flavour. Half an hour will not cook one; use a 3-4 lb chicken cut into joints and give it 45-60 minutes at a bare simmer, skimming the scum in the first ten minutes.
- Two quarts of waterEight cups for one bird gives a thin broth by modern taste. Six cups produces a soup that will actually thicken to the "cream" consistency described.
- The curry powderCoriander, cassia, pepper and turmeric only, with no chilli and no cumin, is a mild nineteenth-century blend. Cassia is what is often sold simply as cinnamon; a scant tablespoon of the mixture total is about right for this volume, and it is worth frying it briefly in the butter with the onions rather than adding it raw to the broth.
- Rice-flour as thickenerRice flour is still sold and is what gives the soup its particular silky body; slake 2-3 tablespoons in cold water before stirring it in or it will lump. Cornflour is the nearest everyday substitute, though it sets glossier and stands up less well to long simmering and to the lemon.
- Straining, then servingThe instruction to strain out the onion shreds and then serve the fowl in the tureen means the meat is lifted out first, the liquid passed through a sieve, and the two recombined. Pull the chicken from the bones before it goes back in unless you want guests dealing with joints in soup.
- Lemon lastThe acid goes in at the end, after thickening, as the recipe has it. Added early its brightness is lost, and prolonged cooking with acid can slacken a starch-thickened soup.
- YieldServes six generously as a first course, four as a meal, with about 1 1/2 cups of cooked long-grain rice handed separately.
Mulligatawny is Anglo-Indian, its name generally traced to the Tamil milagu-tannir, "pepper water" - originally a thin, hot, souring broth of the Coromandel coast, which British households in India rebuilt around meat and thickening until it became a substantial soup. By the time Kettner's Book of the Table appeared in 1877, it was a fixture of English dining rooms. The author's habit of explaining one dish by another is on display here: mulligatawny defined as cock-a-leekie with rice standing in for leeks and prunes tells you he expected his readers to know Scottish soups better than Indian ones. The opening joke belongs to the same world - Mrs Gamp is the gin-fond nurse of Dickens's Martin Chuzzlewit, and "when so dispoged" is her own phrase, borrowed here to soften the word moisten.