Mullagatawny Soup
INGREDIENTS for soup for 8 persons.- tablespoonfuls of Holbrook's curry-powder, 6 onions, 1 clove of garlic, 1 oz. of pounded almonds, a little lemon-pickle or mango-juice to taste; 1 fowl or rabbit; 4 slices of lean bacon; 2 quarts of medium stock, or, if wanted very good, best stock. AVERAGE COST, 3s. 6d.
Slice and fry the onions of a nice colour; line the stewpan with the bacon; cut up the rabbit or fowl into small joints and slightly brown them; put in the fried. onions, the garlic and stock, and simmer gently till the meat is tender; skim very carefully and when the meat is done, rub the curry-powder to a smooth batter; add it to the soup with the almonds, which must be first pounded, with a little of the stock. Put in seasoning and lemonjuice or mango-juice to taste, and serve boiled rice with it.
TIME.-2 hours.
SEASONABLE in winter.
Note. This soup can also be made with breast of veal or calf's head. Vegetable mullagatawny is made with veal stock, by boiling and pulping chopped vegetable marrow, cucumbers, onions and tomatoes and seasoning with currypowder and cayenne. Nice pieces of meat, good curry-powder and strong stock, are necessary to make this soup good.
Mullagatawny Soup. (Made with Tinned Meat.) - INGREDIENTS for sufficient soup for 6 persons. -A 2-lb. tin of Australian mutton, 2 onions, 2 carrots, 1 turnip, 1 oz. of cooked or uncooked bacon, 2 tablespoonfuls of flour, a bunch of herbs, 1/2 a teaspoonful of sugar, the juice of a lemon, 1 oz. of curry-powder, a stick of rhubarb or 2 sour apples, 2 quarts of warm water, pepper and salt. AVERAGE COST, 1s. 8d.
Turn the meat into a basin, take off some of the fat and pour over it the water.
Put 2 oz. of the fat with the bacon into a saucepan; and when the fat has melted, add the onions sliced and frizzle for a few minutes; then add the other vegetablesand herbs, shaking in with them the flour and curry-powder and fry a few more minutes; then add the water and meat and stir till it boils and thickens thoroughly, when well skim and add the seasoning and lemonjuice. Allow the soup to boil till the vegetables are well cooked, then rub the soup through a hair sieve with a wooden spoon.
TIME.-1 hour.
SEASONABLE in winter. ز MULLED ALE.
Two versions of the same soup: a long-simmered one built on a whole fowl or rabbit, and a quicker store-cupboard version using tinned mutton. Both hinge on stock that already tastes of something.
- The curry-powder quantityThe first recipe's opening line has lost its number, giving only "tablespoonfuls of Holbrook's curry-powder". The tinned-meat version below calls for 1 oz., something like 3 to 4 tablespoonfuls, which is assertive. Start at 1 tablespoonful and add more at the end.
- Add the powder late, off a rolling boilAdd the powder late in the first recipe -- it directs that the curry-powder be rubbed to a smooth batter and added, with the pounded almonds, only when the meat is done; slaking it with a little stock stops it sitting in dry lumps and tasting raw. The tinned-meat version does the opposite, shaking the powder in dry with the flour and frying it. Once the powder is in, hold the soup at a gentle simmer.
- Holbrook's curry-powderA branded commercial blend of the period, no longer made. Any good Madras-style curry powder works; if yours contains no chilli, a pinch of cayenne restores the heat Victorian blends carried.
- Stock, and what "medium" meantBeeton's "medium stock" is a made stock of beef and veal with vegetables and herbs; "best stock" is the richer, stronger version. Use a well-flavoured chicken or beef stock, unsalted if possible, since the bacon and curry powder both add salt. Two imperial quarts is about 2.3 litres.
- Lemon-pickle and mango-juiceLemon-pickle was a spiced, salted lemon preserve found in Victorian larders; "mango-juice" most likely means the syrupy liquor from a jar of mango chutney or pickle. Chopped preserved lemon, or a spoonful of chutney liquid, gives the same sour-salt lift. Lemon juice alone is the plainest substitute and the recipe's method permits it.
- The rabbit or fowlA jointed rabbit or a small chicken, cut into small joints on the bone. Two hours of gentle simmering suits rabbit and an older boiling fowl; a modern supermarket chicken will be falling apart in 45 to 60 minutes, so lift the pieces out when tender, strip the meat and return it at the end.
- AlmondsAn ounce of almonds pounded to a paste with a little stock — a mortar or a small blender does in a minute what took a Victorian cook ten. It thickens the soup slightly and rounds off the spice; ground almonds stirred in are an acceptable shortcut.
- Rhubarb or sour apples in the tinned versionThese are there for acidity, not sweetness, and both dissolve into the soup during the boiling. Only the rhubarb stalk is used. A tart cooking apple is the easier choice today.
- Tinned mutton"Australian mutton" was cheap imported tinned meat, already cooked and packed in its own fat. Tinned or leftover cooked lamb works; if you use fresh lamb, brown it and allow it longer to become tender than the stated hour.
- ServingThe first version serves eight and wants plain boiled rice alongside. The sieved tinned-meat version serves six as a smooth soup; the recipe says nothing about rice with it.
Mulligatawny came into English kitchens from southern India, the name generally traced to Tamil milagu tannir, "pepper water", a broth that British households in Madras enriched with meat, stock and thickening until it became a substantial soup. By Beeton's day it was thoroughly domesticated: an Anglo-Indian dish made with commercial curry-powder, rabbit or a boiling fowl, and served with rice at the start of a winter dinner. The two recipes here mark a shift in the household economy of the late nineteenth century. The first is the older kind, dependent on good homemade stock and a cook with time and a mortar; the second, at less than half the stated cost, is built on a tin of imported Australian mutton, one of the cheap canned meats that had been reaching British tables in quantity from the 1870s, joined by refrigerated shipments from about 1880.