Meaning & use
mulligatawny
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Meanings
nouncountable or uncountable
A spicy soup made with lentils or other pulses, usually thickened with rice and flavored with curry spices.
Grammar: Uncountable for the soup itself ('We had mulligatawny'), countable for a serving or a kind ('two mulligatawnies').
Patterns
- a bowl of mulligatawny
- mulligatawny soup
- make/serve mulligatawny
The restaurant's mulligatawny came with a wedge of lemon on the side.
She ordered a bowl of mulligatawny and some warm bread for lunch.
My grandmother's mulligatawny is thick with lentils and smells of cumin.
noununcountableBritish
A thick lentil soup with curry spices, originally from southern India and later popular in Britain.
Grammar: This historical sense is uncountable and normally appears with the definite article: 'the mulligatawny of southern India'.
Patterns
- the mulligatawny of somewhere
- Anglo-Indian mulligatawny
Anglo-Indian cooks brought mulligatawny to British tables in the nineteenth century.
The dish known as mulligatawny began as a peppery broth in southern India.
Word forms
| plural | mulligatawnies |
|---|
Common combinations
- mulligatawny soup
- The pub's special was mulligatawny soup with crusty rolls.
- a bowl of mulligatawny
- He finished a bowl of mulligatawny before his main course.
- thick mulligatawny
- This thick mulligatawny is almost a meal in itself.
- spicy mulligatawny
- The spicy mulligatawny left a warm feeling in my mouth.
- make mulligatawny
- It takes an hour to make mulligatawny properly.
Synonyms and how they differ
- lentil soup
- A plainer term for any soup based on lentils; use it when there are no curry spices and no rice.
- curried soup
- A general description rather than a fixed dish name, so it fits many soups that taste of curry.
- broth
- A thinner, clearer liquid; mulligatawny is normally thick and heavily spiced, so broth is only a rough substitute.
Word family
- mulligatawny paste noun
- A concentrated curry paste sold for making the soup quickly.
Commonly confused: mulligatawny or mulligatawny vs. minestrone?
mulligatawny vs mulligatawny vs. minestrone
Both are hearty soups, but minestrone is Italian and based on vegetables, beans and pasta, with no curry spices.
Practice
Which sentence uses mulligatawny correctly?
Choose one answer.
When you count servings, the plural is 'mulligatawnies', so option 1 is right. Option 2 uses the uncountable form with a number, and options 3 and 4 spell the plural wrongly.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “mulligatawny”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.