Name: Mulligatawny Soup
Ingredients: tender lean mutton, cut into small square pieces; butter; minced onion; rich stock; ¼ cup rice; curry powder; ketchup, lemon juice, or white wine; strained preserved tomato (optional)

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 the minced onion.
Add the mutton and onion to the rich stock.
Stir in the rice and mix the curry powder with ketchup, lemon juice, or white wine before adding it to the pot.
Simmer gently until the rice is fully cooked.
Serve the soup in a tureen, adding strained preserved tomato for extra flavor if desired.

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).
Mutton + ricetop 7% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together1,019 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Mutton + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together3,781 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 tomato

The recipe marks tomato as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, butter, onion, rice, ketchup):

Potatobetter flavor fit
Leekabout as good a flavor fit
Tomatothe original
Carrotabout as good a flavor fit

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