Skip to main content
Main

Mullagatawny Soup

A curry-flavored chicken broth soup with onions, carrot, turnips, celery, and flour thickener.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 10,173 recipes mention both. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Mullagatawny Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Combine the chopped onions, carrot, turnips, and celery with the chicken broth in a large pot.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil over high heat.

  3. Reduce to a simmer and cook for 20 minutes.

  4. Stir in the curry powder and flour, mixing well, then let the soup boil for 3 minutes.

  5. Strain the soup through a colander.

Serve

  1. Serve with pieces of chicken added.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Onions
Soften and sweeten as they cook, forming the savory base of the soup.
Chicken broth
Forms the liquid base and carries the flavor of the vegetables and curry.
Flour
Thickens the broth slightly as it boils, giving the soup more body.
Curry powder
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavor that defines the soup.

The step that matters

Adding the flour with the curry powder. Flour stirred into hot liquid can clump; mixing it well and letting the soup boil afterward lets the starch disperse and thicken evenly.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, turnip, celery, chicken, flour):

  1. Leekbetter flavor fit
  2. Parsnipbetter flavor fit
  3. Arrowrootbetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, celery, chicken, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

You might also like

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipes