Name: Mulligatawny Soup
Ingredients: tender lean mutton, cut into small square pieces; butter; minced onion; rich stock; rice; curry powder; ketchup; lemon juice or white wine; preserved tomato (strained)

Why it works: Rice and tomato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and 2,990 recipes mention both. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Mulligatawny Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Toss the mutton pieces in butter with minced onion.
Add the mutton and onion to rich stock.
Mix curry powder smooth in ketchup, lemon juice, or white wine, and add to the pot.
Simmer gently until the rice is fully cooked.
Serve in a tureen, adding strained preserved tomato for improvement.

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.

Rice + tomatotop 3% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together2,990 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Onion + tomatotop 4% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together20,622 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Onion + ricetop 5% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together9,990 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Lemon + tomatotop 6% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together4,599 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Mutton + ricetop 7% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together1,019 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

Flavor stand-ins for the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, butter, onion, rice, ketchup, tomato):

Grapebetter flavor fit
Coconutabout as good a flavor fit
Appleabout as good a flavor fit
Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, butter, onion, rice, ketchup, tomato. 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).