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Mulligatawney, Saigon
Cut in very small squares two sound onions, three leeks, two seedless green peppers and four branches celery. Place vegetables in a saucepan with half ounce butter and brown ten minutes, stirring well, then add one light tablespoon curry powder; stir well while heating two minutes; moisten with two quarts broth and one pint pure tomato juice, let come to a boil, then add two ounces rice, two medium, peeled potatoes cut in small squares; season with half teaspoon salt and half light teaspoon pepper. Boil thirty minutes, add two peeled and cored apples cut in quarter-inch-square pieces, milk and grated white part of one sound fresh cocoanut and one ounce shredded, salt codfish. Lightly mix and gently boil thirty minutes. Remove, pour the soup into a tureen and serve.
A curry-spiced vegetable and coconut soup in the Anglo-Indian mulligatawny family, given a Southeast Asian turn by the coconut and dried fish. Nothing here is difficult, but the timings and the coconut need attention.
- The hinge: bloom the curry powderThe two minutes of stirring the curry powder into the buttered vegetables before any liquid goes in is the step that makes the soup. Skipped or rushed, the powder stays raw and dusty; let it toast until it smells nutty, but do not let it scorch.
- Coconut, in practice"Milk and grated white part of one sound fresh cocoanut" means the liquid inside the nut plus the grated flesh, not canned coconut milk. A coconut will typically give something under a cup of water and several cups of grated meat. A can of coconut milk plus unsweetened shredded coconut is the nearest substitute, scaled to that quantity of meat.
- The salt codfishOne ounce is a seasoning, not a protein. Modern salt cod is heavily cured; rinse the shreds well or soak them for twenty minutes and drain, or the soup will be too salty. Hold back the half teaspoon of added salt until the cod has been in for a few minutes and taste then.
- MeasuresHalf an ounce of butter is one tablespoon. Two ounces of rice is about a third of a cup uncooked. Two quarts of broth plus one pint of tomato juice is ten cups of liquid in total.
- Rice and the hour of boilingThe rice goes in for the full hour and will break down and lightly thicken the broth rather than stay in distinct grains. If you want separate grains, add the rice for the last twenty-five minutes instead.
- ApplesQuarter-inch dice of a firm apple will hold up over thirty minutes; a soft eating apple will melt into the broth. Either result is acceptable, but choose deliberately.
- "Seedless green peppers"Green bell peppers with the seeds and ribs removed.
- YieldTen cups of liquid before reduction serves eight generously as a first course, six as a meal. It reheats well and thickens further overnight; loosen with broth.
Mulligatawny is generally traced to the Tamil milagu-tannir, "pepper water" — a thin spiced broth that British households in southern India adapted into a thickened, meat-or-rice soup and carried back to England, where it became a fixture of Victorian and Edwardian dining rooms. By the time this book was compiled, "mulligatawny" had loosened into a category rather than a formula, and cookbooks organised around "the world's kitchen" liked to append a place name to each variation. The Saigon label points to French Indochina, and the additions that distinguish this version — fresh coconut, tomato, and a small quantity of dried salt fish used as a savoury backbone rather than a main ingredient — are all consistent with Southeast Asian cooking as it was being reported to Western readers, though the dish as written is a hotel kitchen's composition rather than anything documented in Vietnam.