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Mulligatawny, Osaca
Cut in quarter-inch squares one pound lean raw mutton. Cut also into smaller squares two each new carrots and white turnips, the white parts of two leeks, a green pepper and bean garlic. Place in a saucepan with one and a half tablespoons melted butter and gently brown for fifteen minutes, frequently stirring meanwhile. Moisten with two and a half quarts white broth, season with a heavy teaspoon salt, one teaspoon curry powder and half teaspoon white pepper, lightly mix and let slowly boil for forty-five minutes. Add six fresh okras trimmed and cut into quarter-inch pieces, one large peeled and cored apple, three peeled slices eggplant and four small, peeled, fresh red tomatoes, all cut into small pieces. Let them gently boil for thirty minutes longer, lightly mixing once in a while, then add the milk and shredded white fibres (meat) of a small fresh cocoanut. Lightly mix, boil for ten minutes, pour into a soup tureen and serve.
A long-simmered mutton and vegetable curry soup that reads more like a Creole-inflected gumbo than an Anglo-Indian mulligatawny. Nothing here is hazardous; the work is in the knife prep and in reading a few dated terms.
- "Bean garlic"A clove of garlic; "bean of garlic" is a period rendering of the French gousse d'ail. Take it as one clove, chopped small with the other vegetables.
- White brothA pale, unroasted stock of veal or chicken bones, made without browning so the soup keeps its colour. Two and a half quarts of unsalted chicken stock stands in directly; if using commercial stock, cut the heavy teaspoon of salt back and correct at the end.
- The coconut"The milk" means the thin water inside a fresh nut, not canned coconut milk, and the "white fibres" are the grated meat. A small coconut yields perhaps half to three-quarters of a cup of water and a couple of cups of grated flesh. Canned coconut milk will work but gives a richer, heavier soup than intended.
- Curry powderOne teaspoon in two and a half quarts is a whisper by current standards, and older commercial curry powders were often milder than many sold now. Taste at the forty-five-minute mark and add more if it reads flat.
- MuttonTrue mutton — mature sheep, generally reckoned over a year old — is scarce outside halal and specialist butchers. Lamb shoulder or leg, cut in quarter-inch dice, is the practical substitute; it will be milder and will soften faster, so check it before the full simmer is up.
- Cooking timesForty-five minutes plus thirty plus ten is a long haul, and the okra, apple, eggplant and tomato will collapse into the broth rather than stay distinct. That is the intended texture here, thickening the soup, but if you want visible vegetables add the second round in the last twenty minutes.
- Eggplant slices"Three peeled slices" is genuinely vague — take it as about a third of a medium eggplant, peeled and diced.
- YieldTwo and a half quarts of broth plus the meat and vegetables, less some evaporation over the long boil; figure eight to ten servings as a first course, five or six as a main. Plain boiled rice alongside is a common accompaniment for mulligatawny, though this recipe does not mention it.
Mulligatawny takes its name from the Tamil milagu tanni, pepper water, a broth that British residents in Madras reworked into a thickened, meat-bearing soup over the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.