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Mulligatawny Soup

A spiced vegetable and rice soup made with stock, butter, and curry powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Mulligatawny Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Melt the butter or dripping in a saucepan.

  2. Add the chopped vegetables and fry for a few minutes.

  3. Stir in the rice, flour, and curry powder until well mixed.

  4. Pour in the stock and season with salt and pepper.

  5. Simmer slowly for 1 to 2 hours, then strain through a sieve.

Finish and serve

  1. Return the soup to the saucepan and add the milk, lemon juice, sugar, and rice.

  2. Cook slowly without boiling until the rice is tender.

  3. Adjust seasoning if necessary and serve hot.

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. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  4. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Turnip + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter or dripping
Adds fat for frying the vegetables and carries the curry flavour.
Rice flour
Thickens the soup as it cooks, giving it body.
Curry powder
Provides the spiced aroma that defines the soup.
Milk
Adds creaminess and softens the sharpness of the spices.
Rice
Adds texture and body as it cooks until tender in the soup.

The step that matters

Cook slowly without boiling after adding the milk. Milk can curdle or scorch when it boils, leaving the soup grainy. Gentle heat keeps it smooth while the rice softens.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, onion, turnip, carrot, rice, flour, milk):

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion, turnip, carrot, rice, flour, milk. 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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