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Mullagatawny Soup

A veal and bacon or ham soup flavored with curry powder and cayenne pepper, 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 the base

  1. Slice the onions and fry them in clarified dripping until golden.

  2. Remove the onions and 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 through a sieve into another saucepan.

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

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

  6. Boil for a few minutes.

Serve

  1. Rub the 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 + garlictop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together27,090 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Pepper + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together8,379 recipes

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

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 and carries the flavour of the whole soup.
Onions
Sweetness and savoury depth as they soften and turn golden in the fat.
Bacon or ham
Adds smoky, salty meaty flavour to the stock as it simmers.
Veal
Contributes meaty flavour and body to the stock once browned and simmered.
Curry powder
Provides the spiced aroma and warm flavour that define the soup.

The step that matters

Blend the curry powder smooth before adding it. Curry powder left as lumps or dry clumps will not disperse evenly and can leave gritty pockets of intense spice. Blending it with cold liquid first lets the spices hydrate and mix into the soup evenly.

Flavor stand-ins for the garlic

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

  1. Celerybetter flavor fit
  2. Turmericabout as good a flavor fit
  3. Parsleyabout as good a flavor fit
  4. Garlicthe original

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