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Mulligatawny, Young
Cut in small squares a medium onion, two leeks, a green pepper, two ounces raw lean ham, one exceedingly small, peeled, sound eggplant cut in slices and a quarter pound raw lean veal. Place in saucepan with one ounce butter and gently brown for ten minutes, carefully stirring once in a while. Pour in two quarts broth one quart water and two gills pure tomato juice. Season with a good teaspoon each salt and curry powder, a half teaspoon pepper, and let boil for fifteen minutes. Add two ounces raw rice, six trimmed fresh okras cut in small pieces, one good-sized peeled and cored apple cut in small pieces, a quarter pound seeded California raisins, mix well and let cook for forty-five minutes. Broil six thin slices bacon for two minutes on each side, remove, place on plate and keep at oven door till well dried, then pound them in mortar to a dust, sprinkle in soup, mix well, pour soup into a tureen and serve.
A long-simmered curried soup that thickens itself from rice and okra rather than roux. The finishing touch, a dust of dried broiled bacon stirred in at the table, is the part most likely to be skipped and the part that makes it.
- Gills and ouncesTwo gills of tomato juice is one cup. Two ounces of raw rice is roughly a third of a cup; two ounces of butter would be half a stick, but here only one ounce, two tablespoons, is called for.
- The broth is unspecifiedThe original names only "broth," leaving whatever light stock the kitchen had on hand. Use a mild unsalted chicken or veal stock; a heavily reduced modern commercial stock will fight the curry and push the salt too high.
- Bacon dust is the hingeBroil the slices until crisp but not scorched, then, as the original directs, keep them at the oven door until they are well dried and snap. They must be bone dry or they will smear rather than powder in the mortar. Stir the dust in just before serving, so it stays aromatic.
- Bloom the curry powderIf you like, add the teaspoon of curry with the vegetables and butter for the last minute of browning rather than into the liquid, so the spices toast; the original stirs it into the liquid instead.
- Season generously by modern tasteOne teaspoon of curry for over three quarts of soup is very mild. Taste after the forty-five-minute simmer and expect to add more curry, salt and pepper then.
- The rice and okra are the thickenersForty-five minutes will break the rice down and the okra will release its mucilage, which is the intended body of the soup. Cook uncovered so the liquid reduces; if you want the grains intact, that is a different soup.
- The eggplant"Exceedingly small" points to a slim Italian or Japanese eggplant rather than a globe. Salting is probably unnecessary with young fruit, and the slices will collapse into the soup by the end.
- Veal and hamA quarter pound of lean veal is a small amount of shoulder or leg; the original has it cut in small squares. "Raw lean ham" most likely means an uncooked cured ham such as prosciutto or speck; ordinary cooked deli ham gives much less depth. Boneless pork shoulder substitutes for the veal.
- YieldThe pot starts with a little over three quarts of liquid and reduces over the hour's cooking; it serves six to eight as a first course. It thickens on standing and will need thinning with stock when reheated.
Mulligatawny reached British and American cookbooks by way of colonial Madras, and the name is generally traced to the Tamil miḷagu taṇṇīr, "pepper water" — a thin, sour, peppery broth that Anglo-Indian households enriched with meat, rice, apple and dried fruit until it became a substantial soup. The apple and raisins here are not an Indian element but a European addition, and they recur routinely in Anglo-Indian versions of the dish. The International Cook Book was assembled by Alexander Filippini, long a chef at Delmonico's in New York, and this version reads like restaurant work: measured in ounces, built on a stock already at hand, and finished with a garnish made expressly for the plate. The "Young" of the title is not explained in the book itself.