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Mulligatawny Soup
This is an Indian soup. It may be made with either veal, calf's head, chicken or rabbit, or with two or more of these in combination. It is highly seasoned with onions, curry powder and sour apples, lemons or some other strong acid fruit. The best portions of the meat are removed as soon as tender and served with the soup. Boiled rice should always accompany Mulligatawny, served separately. Four pounds of veal; one-half pound of ham; four quarts of water; one carrot; two onions; one turnip; four cloves; four peppercorns; six apples (sliced); three tablespoons of curry powder; one teaspoon of sugar; salt and pepper to taste. Have the bone of the veal well broken, and place the veal in the soup-kettle with the ham and the water. Fry the onions brown in a little butter, and put them with the meat, adding at the same time the sliced apples, vegetables, cloves, peppercorns, and the sugar and curry powder mixed to a paste with a little water. Simmer gently for five hours, then strain and set away to cool. Remove any fat that forms, and return to the range, placing in the soup at the same time, a piece of the veal for each plate. When the whole is thoroughly heated, season with salt and pepper and serve.
A five-hour meat broth built on curry powder, apples and browned onion — straightforward, but the proportions and the two-stage service need translating.
- Cut of vealFour pounds of bone-in veal shank or neck is what "the bone well broken" means; ask for it sawn across so the marrow leaches out. Veal shoulder with a couple of cracked bones added works equally well.
- The hamHalf a pound of ham here is a salting and smoking agent, not a serving of meat. Use a piece of unsliced dry-cured ham, gammon or a ham hock, and hold back on salt until the very end.
- Sour applesSix apples for four quarts is a lot of fruit, and the point is acidity, not sweetness. Granny Smith is the closest common substitute for the hard sour cooking apples intended; sweet dessert varieties will leave the soup cloying.
- Curry powderThree tablespoons is a lot by present-day habit; period commercial curry powders were probably milder and more turmeric-heavy than many blends sold now, though composition varied a good deal from maker to maker. Start with two tablespoons of a standard mild Madras-style powder, mixed to a paste with water as directed so it does not clump, and adjust at the finish.
- Five hours is not a mistakeThe long simmer is what extracts gelatin from the broken bones and gives the strained soup body without thickening. Keep it at a bare tremble — a rolling boil will emulsify the fat back in and cloud everything.
- Cool, then defatStraining and chilling overnight is the practical route: the fat lifts off in a solid sheet, which no amount of skimming a hot pot will match. Refrigerate rather than "setting away" at room temperature.
- Reserving the meatThe text says the best portions come out "as soon as tender," which is well before five hours — pull the meat off the shank at around two hours and set it aside, then let the bones carry on. Return a piece per bowl to reheat in the finished soup.
- RiceServe plain boiled long-grain rice separately, a spoonful stirred into each bowl at the table. Yield is roughly eight to ten servings from the finished quantity.
Mulligatawny is the best-known of the Anglo-Indian dishes that travelled back to British and then American kitchens, and its name is generally traced to Tamil words for pepper and water — the thin, sour, peppery broth of southern India. What arrived in Britain was a considerable reworking: meat stock, curry powder from a tin, and apple or lemon standing in for tamarind, since the sourness had to come from somewhere available. By the time this recipe was printed, mulligatawny had been a fixture of English and American soup lists for the better part of a century, familiar enough that the compiler could open with "This is an Indian soup" and assume the reader already knew roughly what to expect. The instruction to serve rice separately is the one clear survival of the dish's origins; the veal, ham and turnip are entirely the adopting kitchen.