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Mulligatawny Soup

A spiced chicken and vegetable soup made with butter, flour, spices, and stock, served with boiled rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and mace match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and 8,199 recipes mention both. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Mulligatawny Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup base

  1. In a large pot, cook the vegetables and chicken in butter until browned.

  2. Add the flour, mace, curry powder, cloves, parsley, tomatoes, and stock.

  3. Simmer for one hour.

Strain and finish

  1. Strain the soup, reserving the chicken.

  2. Rub the vegetables through a sieve.

  3. Add the chicken back to the soup.

  4. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

  5. Serve with boiled rice.

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. Clove + macetop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together8,199 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together34,118 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Clove + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together13,144 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Clove + appletop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together2,615 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Parsley + macetop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together4,268 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Browns the vegetables and chicken, adding richness and savoury flavour.
Flour
Thickens the stock so the soup has body.
Chicken
Provides the main protein and savoury meaty flavour.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and body, balancing the spices.
Onion
Builds the savoury base flavour as it softens and browns.
Apple
Adds gentle sweetness and acidity to offset the curry powder.

The step that matters

Browning the vegetables and chicken in butter. Browning develops deep savoury flavour through the Maillard reaction. Pale, steamed vegetables give a flat, washed-out soup, so brown them well before adding liquid.

Flavor stand-ins for the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, parsley, clove, mace, pepper, chicken):

  1. Lemonbetter flavor fit
  2. Limebetter flavor fit
  3. Orangeabout as good a flavor fit
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, parsley, clove, mace, pepper, chicken. 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.

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