Culinary jottings

This I tasted, and, finding that it required a little sub-acid, I administered a table-spoonful of red currant jelly and a few drops of lemon juice. Having stirred this in well, I put in a dessert-spoonful of Madras chutney, and added stock enough to produce a thin soup — about three pints in all. This I allowed to simmer (to extract the flavours of the various ingredients) for a quarter of an hour, while I pounded four ounces of sweet almonds in a mortar with a little milk, using a breakfast-cupful altogether. When fully pounded, I strained the almond milk into the soup, and stopped the simmering. The next step was to pass the whole of the liquid through a tin strainer into a clean bowl to catch up lumps of onion, chutney, &c. The mulligatunny having been skimmed, was now ready, all but the thickening. This process was carried out in due course, with two ounces of butter and two of flour. The soup was brought to boiling-point, and, off the fire, just before serving, a coffee-cupful of the best cream I could get was stirred into the tureen as the soup was poured into it." "When this was presented to the Admiral, the old gentleman was delighted, and, altogether forgetting his previous asseveration, exclaimed that he had not eaten such a basin of mulligatunny since serving on the East India station in the Cockatrice in the year 1834. " I knew," concluded by friend, " that the dear old man was thinking of ' calipash' and ' calipee' when he pitched into me on the previous occasion, but I was not such an ass as to suggest that he had made a mistake." This recipe of my friend's may be taken as a very good guide for a mulligatunny made with pure meat stock extracted from veal, mutton, beef, or fowl, and ready-made paste. Yolks of eggs may supply the place of cream, and cocoanut milk may be substituted for the lait d'amandes. The addition of either almond or cocoanut milk is, however, a sine qua non, if the object be to obtain a soft, creamy, well-flavoured, thick mulligatunny . The straining must also be carried out carefully, and the thickening as well. Rice is served with mulligatunny, but it is, I think, a mistake to do so. We do not call for rice with hare soup, game soup, or mock-turtle ; why, then, should we ruin our appetites by taking rice with so satisfying a potage as mull iga tunny ? The custom has been handed down to us by our forefathers, who, of course, ate rice with their mulligatunny, as did the natives from whom they learnt the dish. The object in a clear mulligatunny is to present a bright, sparkling consomme of the colour of clear turtle, with a decided flavour of mulligatunny, and slightly peppery. Now, if you try to communicate the flavour with readymade curry-powder or paste, in which there is a certain quantity of turmeric, you will experience considerable difficulty in getting your soup bright and clear. Pounded coriander seed, too, is oily, and would probably cause trouble. So the easiest method is to put a muslin bag, containing the flavouring ingredients, into the soup kettle with tlic vegetables, and to remove it as soon as the consomme is satisfactorily impregnated with the wished-for aroma. The pepperiness is best imparted with a few drops of tabasco as a finishing touch, or of chilli-vinegar if tabasco be unobtainable.