HFF 5.16: Soup-er Bowl

Going a little out of order in order to catch up. And because the receipt I want to try for #13 would be better over the weekend.

The Challenge: Soup-er Bowl. Make a soup or another dish served by the bowl.

The Recipe: Mulligatawny Soup No. 3 from The Lady's Own Cookery Book

The Date/Year and Region: 1844 (3rd ed.), London

How Did You Make It:  I started by preparing the broth. With no further instruction than that it be "good", I boiled some beef bones with my usual combination of vegetable peelings (carrots, parsnips, celery, onion), whatever dried herbs were on hand (savory, parsley, marjoram), a few whole peppercorns, and a little salt. I let it cool in the fridge overnight, then skimmed off as much of the fat as possible, strained out the solid bits. and decanted the clear broth (to remove the sediment).

The next day, I cut and fried two chicken breasts and 5 chopped onions in ~ 6 Tbsp butter, with ~1/2 Tbsp curry powder. Once they were cooked through, I added the chicken and onions to ~10 cups of the broth and set it to simmer for 3 hours.

Total Time: At least 5 hours on boiling/simmering things, another ~30 min chopping vegetables, ~30 minutes frying chicken, and the overnight cooling period.

Total Cost: About $6 for the beef bones and curry powder, unsure on the chicken; onions, vegetable scraps and herbs were all from my garden or else left-over from other projects.

How Successful Was It?: Tastes fine. There's a lot going on flavor-wise, but it's not overwhelming. There is an odd note to the broth, but I'm pretty sure it's just that I'm not expecting chicken and beef together. Making it again, I'd use a bit less broth for this quantity of chicken (6-8 cups instead of 10), add a pinch more salt near the end, and cut both the meat and onions finer. Also, I'm wishing for some jasmine rice and naan to go with it... This is not something I'm likely to make for myself regularly, but it's perfectly adequate to add to the soup repertoire for future events.

 How Accurate Is It?: I picked this dish because The Illustrated Queen Almanac and Lady's Calendar (1866) lists Mulligatawny as a seasonal soup for February, so the timing is accurate. 

A lot of things I feel less certain of are ones that weren't specified: the process for frying the chicken; what exactly should go into a 'good broth'; whether the curry powder I found at the store is the same spice mixture a Victorian cook in England would have used to emulate Indian cooking. I go back and forth on whether the in-specificity of the instructions makes my improvisations more accurate to the spirit of the receipt or less. After all, I'm not a trained or even an amateur 19th century cook whose skills are a product of the 19th century and whose objective is to prepare edible food: I'm a 21st century historian attempting to mimic those skills, and necessarily relying on books to do so. Book which were mostly written by people who did not learn to cook from books, for people who did not wholly learn to cook from books. End digression.

The two weak points that I'm aware of both relate to the meat. I used the only beef-related bones I could find at the grocery store (labelled 'beef stew bones') instead of the veal-knuckle that was specified. I'm not sure how far off these two things are, or if it would even make a difference to the final product, but it was a conscious 'best I can do for now' decision. I also did purchase a whole chicken carcass so that I could 'joint' it as required, but decided at the last minute to save that dish that requires cooking the chicken whole and use the pre-cuts here. I just don't need that much curry soup at this point, and it's supposed to be cut up before cooking anyway. My best guess is that neither of these things should greatly alter the taste, though the cut of the chicken will affect its texture (another reason I decided what I did).

Mulligatawny Soup #3, c. 1844.