Mulligatawny Soup

Potage Mulligatawny (Anglo-Indian curried fowl soup) teaches control over spice: curry must warm in butter long enough to perfume the fat, never so fiercely that it turns bitter. That is the one true thing to know before you touch the pan. The finished soup should be smooth and clean-tasting, ochre from curry, softened rather than buried by cream, with tender chicken in the tureen and riz à l'Indienne beside it.

The original assumes a saucier on staff, white consommé never far from the fire, and a tammy ready for rubbing the soup perfectly fine. At home, prepared clear chicken stock, one heavy saucepan, and a sturdy fine-mesh sieve do that work honestly. The book's compact formula is doubled without changing its ratios to make about two quarts, and a young market chicken is poached in stages because its breast cooks before its legs. One cook, one stove, one evening.

The tammy and second pair of hands are brigade scaffolding; they can go. The fécule-and-curry base, its seven to eight minutes of cooking, and the twenty-minute despumation, the quiet skimming that purifies the soup, are the dish and must stay. Keep the curry pale and fragrant when it meets the butter. That brief moment decides the whole pot.