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Mullagatawny Soup
1 tablespoon beef drippings 1 large onion 2 quarts stock 2 tablespoons chopped carrot 3 tablespoons chopped celery 1/2 lemon 2 cloves 2 peppercorns 1/2 teaspoon salt 1/2 teaspoon curry powder 2 tablespoons boiled rice ½ cup cooked chicken or veal Slice the onion and fry it brown in the drippings; put it into the stock, together with the carrot, celery, lemon juice, cloves and peppercorns. Mix the curry powder and salt to a smooth paste with a little water, and add that also. Simmer one hour, strain and cool; remove the fat; add the chicken and rice; reheat and serve.
A straightforward strained soup that depends almost entirely on the quality of the stock. A few of the quantities read oddly to modern eyes.
- Curry powderHalf a teaspoon in two quarts is very faint by current standards; commercial curry powders of the period were generally turmeric-heavy blends. Start with a tablespoon and adjust; blooming it in the drippings with the onion rather than mixing it to a paste gives more depth.
- The paste stepMixing the powder with water before it goes in helps keep dry spice from clumping on the surface of the stock; it is a sensible precaution if you are adding the spice at that stage.
- Beef drippingsRendered beef fat from a roast. Any neutral fat or butter works, though drippings carry a savoury note that suits the soup.
- Strain, then add backEverything aromatic is discarded after the hour of simmering, which is the point of the method: the vegetables and whole spices flavour the broth and the finished soup is clear apart from the meat and rice. Do not skip the straining and expect the same dish.
- Cooling to skimChilling until the fat sets on top is the cleanest way to remove it, and the soup can rest overnight at this stage. If you are in a hurry, blot the surface with paper towel.
- Rice and meatTwo tablespoons of rice is a garnish, not a body-builder. Cooked chicken or veal should be cut small and added only at the reheat so it does not shred.
- YieldTwo quarts of stock gives roughly six to eight cups after simmering and skimming: four to six servings as a first course.
The name comes from Tamil miḷagu taṇṇīr, "pepper water" — the thin, hot, tamarind-and-pepper broth of southern India — and the soup that reached British and American cookbooks under the spelling "mullagatawny" or "mulligatawny" bears only a family resemblance to it. Anglo-Indian households are generally credited with reworking pepper water into a meat-stock soup thickened with rice and mildly spiced with commercial curry powder, and by the later nineteenth century it had become a fixed entry in the soup chapter, alongside mock turtle and julienne. The version at hand, with its half teaspoon of curry and its careful straining, shows how thoroughly the dish had been naturalised: the heat is gone, the clarity of a French consommé has been imposed on it, and the curry powder functions as a background note rather than the subject of the soup.