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With a history spanning over 200 years, Mulligatawny soup is considered one of the earliest-known dishes of Anglo-Indian cuisine. Prepared using a combination of vegetables, rice, spices, and meat, the semi-liquid dish traces its roots to South Indian rasam, which was modified by Indian cooks to provide travelling Englishmen with a soup.
The soup was first made in the 18th century by cooks working for officials of the East India Company. By the end of the century, the soup had become a popular food item among Britons living in India, with the dish having been recorded in many books and other written pieces of literature of the time. One such reference is found in an English military song that quotes a 1784 Navy Shanty, saying:
“In vain our hard fate we repine;
In vain our fortune we rail;
On Mullaghee-tawny we dine;
Or Congee, in Bangalore Jail.” During the British rule in India, the bureaucrats and officials of the East India Company were settling in different parts of the country. While many of them brought the kitchen ingredients of their homeland with them, they still depended on the native cooks to provide them with meals.
Born and brought up in England, the officials were accustomed to having soup before their meals. However, for Indian cooks, the idea of preparing and serving such a dish was a foreign concept. So to please their finicky bosses, the cooks started experimenting with Tamil rasam 一 an item they felt was closest to the soup. A flavourful dish made with lots of spices and vegetables, it was thus modified into a more watered-down vegetable stew with mild spices. To cater well to the English tastebuds, meat items like chicken and mutton were also introduced to the soup.
What started out as an experimental dish to please the masters soon became a popular comfort food for many. As time passed, more and more English households began adding Mulligatawny soup to their household menu. Cookbooks of the time shared many different recipes for making the soup, ranging from a simple broth that can be prepared quickly with basic vegetables, to one that takes hours to cook and uses fancy vegetables and meat.
By the 1850s, the demand was so huge that food giants like Heinz and Thomas Nelson and Company were selling ready-to-eat soup mix for it in Britain. Presumably, one such tin was taken by the notable British explorer, Dr David Livingstone, to Africa. In one of his travelogues, he wrote: ‘After the gruelling 40-day trek (in Africa), on 6th October 1859, I arrived back to the ship. We made soup from the Mulligatawny paste which we carried in pouches.’
The soup travelled far and wide, from India to England, and then to the rest of the world. However, with the passage of time, Mulligatawny gradually lost its fame. In the current day, what was once a standard part of formal dining menus now finds it hard to register a presence in popular eateries.
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