Mulligatunny

Ingredients

• a pint of water
• two small onions
• a dessert-spoonful of ghee
• three table-spoonfuls of Barrie's Madras mulligaUmny paste
• a table-spoonful of red currant jelly
• a few drops of lemon juice
• a dessert-spoonful of Madras chutney
• four ounces of sweet almonds
• a breakfast-cupful of milk
• two ounces of butter
• two ounces of flour
• a coffee-cupful of the best cream

Method

1. 1

   Fry the onions in ghee until brown.

2. 2

   Add the pepper-water and cook for five minutes.

3. 3

   In a separate pot, fry onions in butter, then stir in the Mulligatunny paste and stock to achieve a mayonnaise consistency.

4. 4

   Add red currant jelly and lemon juice.

5. 5

   Simmer for a quarter of an hour.

6. 6

   Pound almonds with milk, strain into the soup, and thicken with butter and flour.

7. 7

   Bring to a boil and stir in cream before serving.

As published

This recipe was extracted from Culinary jottings (1885) by A. R. Kenney-Herbert, page 175. The excerpt below is the record exactly as published.

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 a des- sert-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. Oddly enough, we undoubtedly get the best mulliga- tunny now-a-days in England, where it is presented in the form of a clear, as well as in that of a thick, soup. In an artistic point of view, the former is infinitely the better of the two, as I shall endeavour to explain later on. N'ever- theless, the thick is by no means to be despised. The 308 CULINARY JOTTINGS FOR MADRAS. superiority of the English adaptation needs bnt little explanation, for it may safely be attributed to the fact that the soup is composed upon a really strong foundation in the shape of stock, an important point that most Indian cooks slur over. This reminds me of an anecdote, which an old friend and fellow-enthusiast on the subject of cookery, communi- cated to me as follows : — He was at home on furlough, and happened to visit an old uncle, whose early years had been spent in the Navy. The Admiral (for the old gentleman had attained that rank) was of a somewhat dictatorial nature, and had acquired a habit of asserting his opinions with a closed fist and vehement superlatives. Conversa- tion one day turned upon mulligatunny, and the ancient mariner declared vociferously that he had never tasted the soup properly made since serving in the West Indies in the Fenelopc frigate in the year 1823, angi'ily shutting up his nephew for daring to observe that it could be fairly well prepared in the East. Now, my friend was far too wise in his generation to contradict his uncle, " but," said he, " I determined to circumvent him." Accordingly Avhen, after some little time, the Admiral went up to London, he was lured into an ambuscade at his nephew's house. " I made the imdligatiuiny myself," said my friend, " the basis of which Avas a good veal stock, prepared, of course, the previous day. My method of procedure was as follows : — I cut up a large sweet onion into fine rings, and fried them in two ounces of good butter, till about to turn yellow. I then stirred in three table-spoonfuls of Barrie's Madras mulligaUmny paste, adding sufficient stock to bring tlie mixture to the consistency of mayonnaise sauce. 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 MULLIGATUNNY. 309 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 al- together. 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

Cook this with the app: pantry check, scaling, and the assistant.