Batman Vol. 1 #701 (2010)
Written by Grant Morrison
Artwork by Tony Daniel
Chef’s Note: Just think of Batman sitting down and eating a bowl of hot soup.
Picture it in your mind. Maybe he’s just stirring it about. Maybe he’s blowing across the spoon so as not to burn his tongue or he’s wondering if there are those little crackers to go with it. Mask on or mask off – just Batman eating soup.
Weird, right? And yet, somehow also entirely appropriate.
Well done, Grant Morrison.
Chef’s Note: Actually, the correct term is “buttling” and Alfred Thaddeus Crane Pennyworth would never make such a rookie mistake in proper pronunciation or spelling.
Shame on you, Grant Morrison.
Chef’s Note: I love the deep sense of relief and contentment Batman is expressing in the last panel – his eyes closed, naming & seeing Alfred as friend, old friend. This is what good food and the company of true family can do.
Well done, Grant Morrison.
Bonus! A well-researched recipe: Alfred Pennyworth’s Mulligatawny Soup.
And then there’s this bit of history:
Mullaga-Tawny signifies pepper water. The progress of inexperienced peripatetic Palaticians has lately been arrested by this outlandish word being pasted on the windows of our Coffee-Houses; it has, we believe, answered the “Restaurateurs’ ” purpose, and often excited John Bull, to walk in and taste—the more familiar name of Curry Soup—would, perhaps, not have had sufficient of the charms of novelty to seduce him from his much-loved Mock-Turtle. It is a fashionable Soup and a great favourite with our East Indian friends, and we give the best receipt we could procure for it.
—The Cook’s Oracle; Containing Recipes for Plain Cookery on the Most Economical Plan for Private Families, Kitchiner, William (1827)