Mulligatawny () is a soup which originated from in Tamil cuisine, though much transformed during its adoption into Anglo-Indian cuisine. The name originates from the Tamil words ( 'black pepper'), and (, 'water'); literally, "pepper-water".
Main ingredients commonly include chicken, mutton, and lentils. Recipes for mulligatawny varied greatly at that time and over the years (e.g., Maria Rundell's A New System of Domestic Cookery contained three versions), and later versions of the soup included British modifications that included meat, although the local Madras (modern Chennai) recipe on which it was based did not. In 1827, William Kitchiner wrote that it had become fashionable in Britain:
thumb|Mulligatawny recipe from Charles Dickens's weekly magazine All The Year Round, 22 August 1868 (page 249)
In 1878, Arthur Robert Kenney-Herbert (1840–1916), under the pen name Wyvern, wrote in his popular Culinary Jottings that "really well-made mulligatunny is ... a thing of the past."
Ingredients
According to The Oxford Companion to Food, the simplest version of the soup included chicken or mutton, fried onion, and spices. More complex versions may call for "a score of ingredients". Versions originating in southern India commonly called for lentils.