Name: Mulligatawny Soup
Ingredients: 1½ lbs neck of mutton; haricot vegetables; 1 lb potatoes; water or stock; salt to taste; pepper to taste

Why it works: Potato and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and 8,303 recipes mention both. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Mulligatawny Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Cut the neck of mutton into pieces and brown in a pot.
Add water or stock and bring to a boil.
Simmer until the meat is tender.
Add haricot vegetables and diced potatoes.
Season with salt and pepper, and cook until vegetables are soft.

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.

Potato + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together8,303 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Mutton + peppertop 7% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together5,442 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Mutton + potatotop 9% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together293 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Neck of mutton: Provides the meat and rich flavor that forms the base of the soup.
Haricot vegetables: Add body and substance, thickening the soup as they cook soft.
Potatoes: Soften during cooking, adding starch that gives the soup body.

Flavor stand-ins for the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, pepper):

Capsicumbetter flavor fit
Carrotbetter flavor fit
Tomatoabout as good a flavor fit
Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, pepper. 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.