Mulligatawny by Whitey Herzog - from "Cooking with the Cardinals, Vol II" (1988)

RECIPE

4 tbsp. cooking oil
3 cups chopped carrots
3 cups chopped green pepper
3 cups chopped onions
4 tart apples, peeled, cored and chopped
15 cups hot water
15 chicken bouillon cubes
8 large whole chicken breasts
8 whole cloves
1/2 tsp. mace
6-8 sprigs fresh parsley
2 tbsp. salt
6-8 drops Tabasco sauce
3 tbsp. paprika
3 cups peeled tomatoes
5 tsp. Accent
4 tsp. sugar
2 tsp. curry powder

Heat oil in soup pot.  Add carrots, green pepper, onion and apples.  Saute over low heat until carrots are tender (15-20 minutes).

Add hot water, bouillon cubes and remaining ingredients.  Cover and simmer for at least 1 hour.  

Remove chicken; bone and cut into small pieces.  Return to pot; simmer 35-45 minutes over very low heat.  Serves 24.

It is easier to cook chicken first, cool and cut it up.  Save broth and add to 15 cups of water when finishing soup.  May substitute wild game such as rabbit, squirrel, pheasant or quail for chicken.  These require more meat.  

"This seems like a lot of work, but it is delicious.  I make it to freeze for after skiing.  We can't wait to get off the slopes!  A nice soup for friends who are ill." -- Mary Lou Herzog

I dont think Hall of Famer Whitey Herzog needs much of an introduction, so we can cut straight to this recipe provided by the former St. Louis Cardinals manager's wife Mary Lou.

Mulligatawny is one of those soups that never has the same two recipes.  The name is a mashup of two Tamil words: milagu and tunni, meaning "pepper water."  Originating in India during the British Empire, it is essentially a curried soup -- but even that description is open to myriad interpretations.

Perhaps the most amusing description of what mulligatawny is comes from novelist Rupert Croft-Cooke (quoted in The Raj at Table: A Culinary History of the British in India by David Burton): 

"Mulligatawny is a soup invented by lazy Indian cooks in the days of British rule and given this Tamil name to impress the memsahib with the fact that she was getting something truly of the country.  In fact she was getting, as the customers in some Indian restaurants get still, the remains of yesterday's curry and rice stewed and put through a sieve."

So this well-named soup travelled from India to the United Kingdom, and from there to all points around the world as a tasty, spicy soup. 

Mulligatawny can be vegetarian or with meat.  Chicken is the most common, but lamb is also popular.  The seasonings can vary from a sweet curry (with apples, raisins and sugar) to a fiery curry (heavy on the hot peppers and spices).

The version that landed in Cooking with the Cardinals, Volume II is an Americanized version, medium-sweet.  The ingredients are easy to find and the hardest part of the recipe is plowing through its many steps.  The end result is delicious.  This was a happy discovery in the baseball cookbooks library.