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Mulligatawny, Yoshimina
Cut the head and feet from a medium-sized duckling and draw it, saving liver and heart. Detach legs from body, cut away meat from legs, then cut in pieces one-third inch square, including liver and heart. Place body in a roasting tin, baste it with a little melted butter, set in oven for twenty minutes, remove and keep hot. Cut two leeks and two medium, white onions in small square pieces, then place them in a saucepan with the pieces of cut-up duck, one and a half tablespoons melted butter, set pan on fire and gently cook for fifteen minutes. Add one teaspoon curry powder, mix well, then moisten with two quarts broth and one quart water. Season with a light teaspoon salt and three saltspoons pepper, add body of duck, all the bones, and boil for twenty-five minutes. Cut three slices peeled eggplant and a peeled and cored apple into small pieces and add to soup with two ounces raw rice, lightly mix and let boil for fifteen minutes more. Finely chop two branches parsley, half a bean garlic, add to soup, mix well and cook for five minutes. Remove body and all bones of duck, skim fat off surface of soup, pour into a tureen and serve.
A duck-based mulligatawny that builds its own stock as it goes: the carcass roasts briefly, then poaches in the soup and is discarded. The instructions assume a cook who buys birds whole, so most of the translation work is in the butchery and the old small measures.
- Buy the duck whole"Draw" means to remove the innards; a supermarket duckling comes drawn, usually with the neck and giblets in a bag. Ask for the liver and heart if they are not included, or leave them out — they add depth but nothing structural.
- Saltspoon and beanA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so three of them is 3/4 teaspoon pepper. A "bean" of garlic is a clove, and "two branches" of parsley means two sprigs, stems and all.
- The roasting stepTwenty minutes of basted roasting is for colour, not for cooking through. The recipe gives no oven temperature; a hot oven will get browning on the skin and bones in that time, and the colour carries into the finished soup.
- "Set pan on fire"Range idiom for putting the pan over heat. The fifteen minutes with leeks, onions and diced duck should be a gentle sweat with no browning of the vegetables.
- Bloom the curry powderOne teaspoon in three quarts of liquid is a very restrained hand by modern taste, and the instruction to mix it into the buttery vegetables before the liquid goes in is the point — the spice needs fat and heat to lose its raw edge. Season to your own preference at the end rather than doubling it blind at the start.
- Skimming is the hingeDuck renders a great deal of fat and the recipe treats skimming as a single step at the end. Skim during the boil as well, or chill the finished soup and lift the cap; unskimmed, the curry and apple are smothered.
- Rice by weightTwo ounces of raw rice is about a third of a cup. It goes in with fifteen minutes of boiling left, which suits long-grain white rice; it will not be al dente but slightly soft, which is correct here.
- YieldThree quarts of liquid before reduction serves eight to ten as a first course. The small quantity of rice may absorb a little liquid on standing, so loosen with broth when reheating if needed.
Mulligatawny came into English cookery from southern India, its name generally traced to the Tamil miḷagu tannīr, "pepper water" — a thin, hot broth that British households in India turned into a substantial curried soup with meat, rice and often apple. By the time this book was compiled the dish was standard in grand hotel and restaurant kitchens in Europe and America, where it was routinely varied by protein and garnish and given a distinguishing second name on the menu; the "Yoshimina" here belongs to that habit of labelling variants, and no particular origin for the word is documented. What is characteristic of the period is the economy of the method: the whole carcass is browned, boiled for its flavour and thrown away, while the leg meat and giblets are diced small enough to be eaten from a soup spoon.