Mulligatawny soup

Chicken mulligatawny soup in a restaurant in Mumbai

The mulligatawny soup [ ˌmʌlə.ɡətɑː.ni (] Listen ^{? / I} ) is a crisp curry - soup , which is an integral part of British cuisine, at least since the second half of the 19th century. It is based on an Indian recipe for a sauce .

The term mulligatawny is an anglicized compound of the Tamil terms Milagu ( listening ^{? / I} ) (மிளகு) for "pepper" and Tannir ( listening ^{? / I} ) (தண்ணீர்) for "water"; soon mull ( listening ^{? / i} ) with reference to it established itself in Anglo-Indian colonial jargon as a term for high officials in Madras who could often afford such dishes from the specialty cuisine.

In India, as in motherland Great Britain, in the Victorian era the selection and method of preparation, the number of courses in a menu and the form of service defined social status ( class or caste ). In this respect, the mulligatawny soup has a cultural, historical and sociological significance as an exotic and new starter or as a further course in the classic menu sequence. In the literature, the Mulligatawny soup is therefore referred to as “ the most important dish associated with the colonial table ” (German: “ the most important dish associated with the colonial era”).

Origin and importance in Great Britain and India

A mulligatawny recipe in Charles Dickens ' weekly All The Year Round, August 22, 1868 (page 249)

The locomotive of the Blue Train from the time of the British Raj , where the Mulligatawny soup was the most frequently served food that is now in the Viswesarayya - Technology Museum in Bangalore .

Like the Mulligatawny soup - isolated already returning members of the British East India Company from 1650 to 1850, from then on in a big way in time a few decades before the coronation of Queen Victoria to the Empress of India - Asia and and other products colonial origin, such as curry powder , Samosas or Worcestershire sauce due to the constant availability in grocery stores became part of British cuisine in the 19th century, part of the publication Food Culture in colonial Asia studied and discussed in detail.

From around 1850, mulligatawny soup was so popular in Britain that it was considered an established dish. It became fashionable to spread little stories about the soup or recipes in magazines . Eating meals was not just about eating , but also fulfilling additional functions: in the colonies , the inclusion of local dishes in the menu of the British administration was seen as a confidence-building measure towards the locals, while in the UK it was a measure to break away from the usual eating habits of the crowd to regularly have colonial dishes on his menu.

The former colonial official Dennis Kincaid (1905–1937) describes, among other things, the social function of food in his classic British social life in India, 1608–1937, and refers to the mulligatawny soup several times : “ Lunch on Sundays always began with mulligatawny soup and this was an 'unalterable rite' in every household there. "(German:" It was an unchangeable ritual that the Sunday lunch in every household [the upper class in India] always started with a mulligatawny soup. ")

Since around the 1960s, British cuisine has increasingly influenced the former colonies, which is why the variants of mulligatawny soup common in the United Kingdom are now also part of upscale Indian cuisine. However, Tony Orchard, who worked as a colonial administrator in India in the 1940s, described that the most common dish served in the dining car of the Blue Train , which took three days to cover the railway between Bombay and Calcutta , was mulligatawny soup. The orders were telegraphed from one train station to the next and then prepared by the restaurants in the vicinity and brought to the train by a snack wallah .

Mulligatawny soup based on the recipe by Kitchiner from 1822 with the last added fried chicken fillets

The Indian model for the Mulligatawny soup was a meatless chili - and pepper - sauce , which the flavoring simple rice dishes served. In Indian cuisine , all dishes are served at the same time, so that a soup as a single course is traditionally unusual in India. In addition, there are no soups in the original Indian cuisine as in Europe, at most curries , which are considered to be the main meal due to the rich deposits. In Great Britain, on the other hand, a menu with a soup meant an extra course and was therefore a sign of higher esteem and social status. This will have been one of the reasons why a simple sauce was turned into a substantial soup. Menus with up to twelve courses that stretched for hours were common in British high society at the time of imperialism . Colonial officials introduced this fashion into India, which in turn was soon copied by the Indian nobility and members of the upper castes .

Preparation and variations

Ingredients for the recipe from 1828 according to Kitchiner and the reprint from 1868 according to Dickens (with duck meat)

Mulligatawny soup according to the recipe from 1828 (with duck meat)

Fish variant of the mulligatawny soup: sweet potatoes as a base (hence the orange color), fried saithe as a filler

Probably the first written mention of mulligatawny soup in Great Britain is the recipe for a "Mulaga Tawny Soup" in the cookbook The Cook's Oracle from 1822 by the doctor, musician and optician William Kitchiner (1775-1827), who invented it in Great Britain the potato chips and the modern telescope applies. Kitchiner's cookbook was a bestseller in the UK, Australia and the US . This fact helped to make the mulligatawny soup internationally known.

The original version of the soup consisted of a poultry (duck, turkey) or chicken broth with a white onion , a chilli pepper and ground ginger , turmeric , curry powder and black pepper , although Kitchiner also recommended that the poultry be cooked halfway through the cooking time remove, cut into pieces, deep-fry until crispy and put back in portions in the individual bowls or plates just before serving the soup:

" Take two quarts of water, and boil a nice fowl or chicken, then put in the following ingredients, a large white onion, a large chilly *, two teaspoonsful of ginger pounded, the same of currystuff, one teaspoonful of turmeric, and half a teaspoonful of black pepper: boil all these for half an hour, and then fry some small onions, and put them in. Season it with salt, and serve it up in a tureen. Obs. - It will be a great improvement, when the fowl is about half boiled, to take it up and cut it into pieces, and fry them and put them into the soup the last thing. (* The pod of which Cayenne pepper is made.) "

- Dr. William Kitchiner: The Cook's Oracle. Ancient and Classic Recipes. John Hatchard, Picadilly, London. 2nd edition, 1828.

As early as the time of the British Raj, every memsahib , a kind of superior of the servants and "head cook", had her own recipe, which was based, for example, on whether the landlord preferred duck, chicken, lamb or beef as a meat ingredient or what degree of spiciness the soup should have . Today one associates a mulligatawny soup as a basic product with a creamy soup with added crème double or coconut milk , spicy with chilli and ginger and brownish to yellowish curry soup with meat fillings with curry powder and turmeric, which is decorated with flat-leaf parsley . The Heinz company offers a convenience food variant with beef, rice and mango chutney in 400 gram tin cans for the British market; The supermarket chain Tesco offers a similar mulligatawny soup with pieces of chicken to warm up in a 600-gram cup as a private label .

In addition, there is no binding recipe, but there are many variants with different meat (poultry, lamb, beef), fruit (apple, mango), vegetable (carrot, potato or sweet potato pieces, cherry tomatoes) and rice (long grain) - or basmati rice). There is also a vegetarian option. Since the mulligatawny soup was originally a soup based on a poultry broth (duck, chicken or turkey), but it has evolved under the umbrella term “curry soups”, there are also variants with fish fillings ( shrimp , deep-fried or fried white Fish), because curry spice mixtures traditionally go well with light fish meat .

Pronunciation, etymology and spelling

The term mulligatawny is an anglicised compound of the Tamil terms for "pepper" and "water". It is unclear why this form of Anglicization and spelling has established itself. There is no unambiguous transcription for the Tamil language, so other spellings could have been used. As early as the 19th century, the author and chef Daniel Santiagoe wondered why the soup was not written “Mollagoo Tanney”:

" Why always spell English people this word wrong? Everybody knows this - Mollagoo, pepper; tanney, water. In proper Tamil, the 'mollagoo tanney' is pronounced 'Mallagoo Neer' and 'Mollagoo Tannir'. "

- Daniel Santiagoe: The Curry Cook's Assistant. Or Curries, How to Make Them in England in Their Original Style. London, 1889. page 51.

This quote shows that the correct pronunciation was not clear even then and the spelling was already fixed on "Mulligatawny", but was controversial. In addition, the variety of English spoken by a speaker is also relevant for pronunciation, especially for the syllable pair -tawny . The variant [ ˌmʌlə.ɡəˈtɑː.ni ] (listening example 1 listening ^{? / I} ) not only corresponds to Santiagoe's favorite variant, but also comes closest to the Tamil tannir and has probably therefore become a common pronunciation throughout India (listening example 2 listening ^{? / I} ; Audio sample 3 listen ^{? / I} ).

The variant [ ˌmʌl.ɪ.ɡəˈtɔː.ni ] (audio sample 4 listening ^{? / I} ), on the other hand, which is given out in the Cambridge Dictionary as a “ British-English variant” for the name of the soup, has no sound similar to the Tamil Tannir , but rather with the first name "Tony" and can therefore not be considered authentic. The English tawny (in German: yellow-brown) describes the color of today's basic version of the soup, but since the term mulligatawny is a neologism anyway , there is no reason to adopt the pronunciation of this adjective , especially since the color of the Originally clear broth does not match today's creamy soups.

Trivia

• In the poem The Police- Wallah’s Little Dinner from the time of the British Raj, the mulligatawny soup is praised.
• In the traditional New Year's Eve - Sketch Dinner for One of North German Radio is Mulligatawny soup the first course, which is served by a butler James.
• In the Seinfeld episode Der Soup Nazi (original title: The Soup Nazi ), Mulligatawny soup is one of the coveted recipes.
• Mulligatawny is the title of a 2010 Jonathan Entwistle short film about racism in East London.
• Mulligatawny. A Souperior Humorous Song. is the title of a play on words - the song of Victor Snowdon from 1944, which is used in the troop entertainment was composed.
• Mulligatawny Soup is the title of an Indian novel by the author Mathai Manorama from 1993 ( ISBN 0-14-012622-8 ).
• In American Horror Story S03E11, mulligatawny soup is eaten and discussed at a witch's dinner . The soup is prepared by Delphine LaLaurie and is highly praised.

literature

• David Burton: The Raj at Table: A Culinary History of the British in India. Burton Publishers, London, 1994, ISBN 978-0-571-14390-0 .
• Alan Eaton Davidson : The Oxford Companion to Food. 2nd edition, edited by Tom Jaine. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2006, ISBN 0-19-280681-5 , chapter "Anglo-Indian cookery", p. 21.
• Madhur Jaffrey: Jaffrey's Ultimate Curry Bible. Ebury Press, London, 2003, ISBN 978-0-09-187415-5 .
• Dennis Kincaid: British social life in India, 1608-1937. Routledge & Kegan Books, 1938, ISBN 0-7100-7284-8 .
• Cecilia Leong-Salobir: Food Culture in Colonial Asia. A Taste of Empire. India, Malaysia, and Singapore. Taylor and Francis, 2011, ISBN 978-1-136-72654-5 .
• Adolphe Meyer: The Post-Graduate Cookery Book. New York, 1903.
• Adolphe Meyer: The Post-Graduate Cookery Book. Emphasis . Kessinger Publishing, Whitefish (Montana / USA) 2010, ISBN 978-1-167-21482-0 .
• Daniel Santiagoe: The Curry Cook's Assistant. Or Curries, How to Make Them in England in Their Original Style. Keegan Paul, Trench & Co., London, 1889. Available through Project Gutenberg .

Web links

Commons : Mulligatawny Soup  - Collection of Pictures, Videos and Audio Files

Wiktionary: Mulligatawny Soup  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

• Recipes with Mulligatawny in the Koch-Wiki

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k} Cecilia Leong-Salobir: Food Culture in Colonial Asia. A Taste of Empire. India, Malaysia, and Singapore. (Pages 8, 13, 14-20, 23-26; recipe on page 21). Taylor and Francis, 2011, ISBN 978-1-136-72654-5 .
2. ^ ^{A b} Alan Davidson: The Oxford Companion to Food . Oxford University Press, Oxford 2014, ISBN 978-0-19-967733-7 , chapter "Anglo-Indian cookery", p. 21.
3. ↑ Udo Pini : The Gourmet Handbook . Könemann-Verlag, 2004, page 678.
4. ^ Henry Yule, AC Burnell: The Anglo-Indian Dictionary . London 1902.
5. ^ ^{A b} Dennis Kincaid: British Social Life in India, 1608-1937. Routledge & Kegan Books, 1938, ISBN 0-7100-7284-8 .
6. ^ Charles Dickens : All the year round. A weekly journal. Conducted by Charles Dickens. Volume XX. From June 13 to November 28, 1868, Including No. 477 to No. 501, Chapman and Hall, Piccadilly , London 1868, p. 249.
7. ^ Tony Orchard: What to tell the cook . Higginbothams Ltd., Madras 1947.
8. ^ Robert Riddell: Indian Domestic Economy and Receipt Book. Comprising Numerous Directions for Plain Wholesome Cookery, Both Oriental and English. Madras (India) 1860.
9. ^ M. Roy: Some Like It Hot: Class, Gender and Empire in the Making of Mulligatawny Soup. In: Economic and political weekly. Volume 45, number 32, 2010, pages 66-75, ISSN  0012-9976 .
10. ^ Lizzie Collingham: Curry. A biography. Chatto & Windus, London 2005.
11. ↑ Product description for the Heinz Classic Mulligatawny Soup on heinz.co.uk, accessed on March 15, 2016.
12. ↑ Product description on the Tesco Stores Ltd. website , accessed March 8, 2016.
13. ↑ Recipe for a variant with apple and sweet potato pieces and basmati rice on BBC Food , accessed on March 8, 2016.
14. ^ Wong H. Suen: Wartime Kitchen: Food and Eating in Singapore 1942-1950. Editions Didier Millet, 2009, ISBN 978-981-4217-58-3 .
15. ↑ Mulligatawny in the Internet Movie Database (English)