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Mulligatawny Soup

A spiced onion soup with milk, flour, and curry powder served with dry rice and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Mulligatawny Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Slice the onions and stew them in the stock for 2 hours.

  2. Mix the flour, curry powder, and salt with the milk.

  3. Add the milk mixture to the soup and boil for 10 minutes, stirring often.

Serve

  1. Serve with dry rice and lemon cut into quarters.

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 their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Onion + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Onion + milktop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Stewed in the stock, they soften and add mellow sweetness to the soup's base.
Stock
Forms the liquid base, carrying the flavour of the onions and spices.
Milk
Adds creaminess and body, mellowing the spiced broth.
Flour
Thickens the milk mixture so it lends body to the soup.
Curry powder
Provides the warm, aromatic spice that defines the soup's flavour.

The step that matters

Adding the milk mixture and boiling. Flour-thickened milk can scorch on the bottom of the pan or separate if it boils too hard. Stirring often keeps the starch dispersed and the milk evenly heated, giving a smooth, uniform soup.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, flour):

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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