Mulligatawny (original) (raw)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Curry soup based on an Indian recipe of the British Raj times

Mulligatawny

A bowl of soup in a metal bowlMulligatawny as served in Mumbai
Type Other
Place of origin Tamil Nadu, India
Serving temperature Hot, often with rice
Similar dishes Rasam
Media: Mulligatawny

Mulligatawny () is a soup which originated from Tamil cuisine. The name originates from the Tamil words miḷagu (மிளகு 'black pepper'), and thanneer (தண்ணீர், 'water'); literally, "pepper-water".[1] It is related to the dish rasam.[_citation needed_]

Main ingredients commonly include chicken, mutton, and lentils.[2]

Mulligatawny was popular in India by the end of the 18th century,[1] and by the 19th century it began to appear in cookbooks of the day, with each cook (or cookbook) featuring its own recipe.[3] Recipes for mulligatawny varied greatly at that time and over the years (e.g., Maria Rundell's A New System of Domestic Cookery contained three versions), and later versions of the soup included British modifications that included meat,[4] although the local Madras (modern Chennai) recipe on which it was based did not.[5] Early references to it in English go back to 1784.[6] In 1827, William Kitchiner wrote that it had become fashionable in Britain:

Mullaga-Tawny signifies pepper water. The progress of inexperienced peripatetic Palaticians[a] has lately been arrested by this outlandish word being pasted on the windows of our Coffee-Houses; it has, we believe, answered the "Restaurateurs'" purpose, and often excited John Bull, to walk in and taste—the more familiar name of _Curry Soup_—would, perhaps, not have had sufficient of the charms of novelty to seduce him from his much-loved Mock-Turtle. It is a fashionable Soup and a great favourite with our East Indian friends, and we give the best receipt[b] we could procure for it.[8][9]

Mulligatawny recipe from Charles Dickens's weekly magazine All The Year Round, 22 August 1868 (page 249)

By the mid-1800s, Arthur Robert Kenney-Herbert (1840–1916), under the pen name Wyvern, wrote in his popular Culinary Jottings that "really well-made mulligatunny is ... a thing of the past."[5] He also noted that this simple recipe prepared by poorer natives of Madras as made by "Mootoosamy" was made by pounding:

a dessert-spoonful of tamarind, six red chillies, six cloves of garlic, a tea-spoonful of mustard seed, a salt-spoonful of fenugreek seed, twelve black peppercorns, a tea-spoonful of salt, and six leaves of karay-pauk. When worked to a paste, he adds a pint of water, and boils the mixture for a quarter of an hour. While this is going on, he cuts up two small onions, puts them into a chatty, and fries them in dessert-spoonful of ghee till they begin to turn brown, when he strains the pepper-water into the chatty, and cooks the mixture for five minutes, after which it is ready. The pepper-water is, of course, eaten with a large quantity of boiled rice, and is a meal in itself. The English, taking their ideas from this simple composition, added other condiments, with chicken, mutton, &c., thickened the liquid with flour and butter, and by degrees succeeded in concocting a soupe grasse of a decidedly acceptable kind.[5][10]

According to the Oxford Companion to Food, the simplest version of the soup included chicken or mutton, fried onion, and spices.[2] More complex versions may call for "a score of ingredients". Versions originating in southern India commonly called for lentils.[2]

  1. ^ "Palatician" may be a nonce word derived from "palate", in the sense of the ability to distinguish between and appreciate different flavours.

  2. ^ "Receipt" is an old form of "recipe".[7]

  3. ^ a b Clarkson, Janet (2010). Soup : a global history. London: Reaktion. p. 118. ISBN 978-1-86189-774-9. OCLC 642290114.

  4. ^ a b c Davidson, Alan (2014). The Oxford companion to food. Tom Jaine, Soun Vannithone (3rd ed.). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. pp. 21, 330. ISBN 978-0-19-967733-7. OCLC 890807357.

  5. ^ Leong-Salobir, Cecilia (2011). Food Culture in Colonial Asia: A Taste of Empire. Abingdon, Oxon, UK: Taylor & Francis. p. 17. ISBN 978-0-415-60632-5.

  6. ^ Dawe, W.H. (1888). The wife's help to Indian cookery : being a practical manual for housekeepers. London: Elliot Stock. p. 74.

  7. ^ a b c "Wyvern" [Kenney-Herbert, Arthur Robert 1840–1916] (1885). Culinary Jottings. A treatise in thirty chapters on reformed cookery for Anglo-Indian rites, based upon modern English and continental principles with thirty menus (5 ed.). Madras: Higginbotham and Co. pp. 306–307.{{[cite book](/wiki/Template:Cite%5Fbook "Template:Cite book")}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)

  8. ^ Yule, Henry (1902). Hobson Jobson (2 ed.). London: John Murray. p. 595.

  9. ^ "When a Recipe Was a 'Receipt'". Merriam Webster. Retrieved 5 October 2024.

  10. ^ Kitchiner, William (1827). The Cook's Oracle; Containing Recipes for Plain Cookery on the Most Economical Plan for Private Families. Edinburgh: Cadell and Co. pp. 262–263.

  11. ^ Roy, Modhumita (2010). "Some Like It Hot: Class, Gender and Empire in the Making of Mulligatawny Soup". Economic and Political Weekly. 45 (32): 66–75. JSTOR 20764390.

  12. ^ Procida, Mary (2003). "Feeding the Imperial Appetite Imperial Knowledge and Anglo-Indian Domesticity". Journal of Women's History. 15 (2): 123–149. doi:10.1353/jowh.2003.0054. S2CID 143009780.