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Mullagatawny Soup

A veal and bacon curry soup served with boiled rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 29,058 recipes mention both. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Mullagatawny Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the onions.

  2. Fry the sliced onions in clarified dripping until golden.

  3. Remove the onions.

  4. Lightly fry the veal in the same pan until browned.

Make the soup

  1. In a saucepan, combine the bacon or ham, veal, onions, and stock.

  2. Simmer slowly for 1 hour, skimming carefully.

  3. Strain the mixture through a sieve into another saucepan.

  4. Blend the curry powder with cold water or stock until smooth.

  5. Add the blended curry to the soup along with cayenne pepper and salt to taste.

  6. Boil for a few minutes.

Serve

  1. Rub a tureen with a cut garlic clove.

  2. Pour the soup into the tureen.

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

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Pepper + garlictop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together27,090 recipes

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

  4. Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together10,433 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Clove + garlictop 10% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together11,368 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Brown stock
Forms the liquid base that carries and mellows the flavours of the soup.
Onions
Caramelised by frying, they add sweetness and body to the soup.
Bacon or ham
Adds savoury, smoky fat that enriches the broth as it simmers.
Veal
Browning adds savoury depth, and simmering releases gelatin for body.
Curry powder
Blooms its aromatic spices in liquid, giving the soup its characteristic warm flavour.

The step that matters

Skimming during the simmer. Skimming removes foam and fat that would otherwise cloud the broth and taste greasy. Simmering gently rather than boiling keeps the stock clear.

Flavor stand-ins for the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, ham, veal, pepper, garlic, rice):

  1. Parsleybetter flavor fit
  2. Turmericbetter flavor fit
  3. Thymebetter flavor fit
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, ham, veal, pepper, garlic, rice. 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.

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