Skip to main content
Main

Mullagatawny Soup

A hearty beef and barley soup with curry, chicken, milk, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 1,979 recipes mention both. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Mullagatawny Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Melt the butter in a stew pan over low heat and add the onions, garlic, parsley, and sweet marjoram. Cook until light brown.

  2. Add the beef and cook until the gravy is extracted.

  3. Pour in the boiling water and add the barley. Simmer slowly for 4 hours.

  4. Mix the curry powder with cold water and add it to the stock.

Finish the soup

  1. Remove the beef and strain the barley through a sieve to thicken the soup.

  2. In a separate pan, cook the chicken joints in butter until tender, keeping the pan covered.

  3. Add the cooked chicken to the soup along with the boiling milk and lemon juice.

  4. Serve the soup 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. Parsley + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,979 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Clove + marjoramtop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Garlic + parsleytop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together9,308 recipes

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

  5. Garlic + marjoramtop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together616 recipes

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

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 down into the flavour base of the soup.
Barley
Thickens the soup as it simmers and its starch releases into the liquid.
Lean beef
Releases its juices into the stock, giving the soup its meaty body.
Curry powder
Provides the spiced aroma and flavour that define the soup.
Milk
Adds richness and softens the sharpness of the spices and lemon.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, spiced broth.

The step that matters

Simmering the barley and beef slowly. Long, gentle simmering lets the beef release its gravy and the barley release its starch, so the soup thickens. Boiling hard can toughen the meat and cloud the broth.

Flavor stand-ins for the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, onion, garlic, parsley, marjoram, beef, barley):

  1. Thymebetter flavor fit
  2. Winter savorybetter flavor fit
  3. Oreganobetter flavor fit
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion, garlic, parsley, marjoram, beef, barley. 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 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipes