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Soup

White Mullagatawny

A white curry soup made with butter, onion, curry powder, curry paste, spices, desiccated soup, milk, and served with rice and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cardamom match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,114 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

White Mullagatawny

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. In a pot, melt the butter over medium heat and fry the onion until golden.

  2. Add the curry powder and curry paste, stirring well.

  3. Pour in the water and add the cloves, cardamom seeds, bay leaves, and garlic. Bring to a boil.

  4. Stir in the desiccated soup and boil until the mixture thickens.

  5. Add the milk and stir well. Season with salt to taste.

  6. Reduce heat and let it simmer gently.

Serve

  1. Before serving, strain the soup and serve with boiled rice and lemon slices on the side.

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 their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Clove + cardamomtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,114 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Cardamom + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together405 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Cardamom + ricetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together554 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds fat for frying the onion and carries the curry flavours into the soup.
Onion
Browns in the butter to add sweetness and savoury depth to the base.
Curry paste
Supplies concentrated spice flavour and aroma that bloom in hot fat.
Desiccated soup
Its starch thickens the liquid as it boils, giving the soup body.
Milk
Adds creaminess and softens the sharpness of the spices.

The step that matters

Stirring in the desiccated soup and boiling until it thickens. Starch in the powder must be heated with the liquid to swell and thicken it. Stopping too early leaves the soup thin, and stirring poorly can leave lumps.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, clove, cardamom, garlic, milk, rice, lemon):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, clove, cardamom, garlic, milk, rice, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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