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Mulligatawny Soup

A spiced soup of rabbit or chicken, vegetables, and apple pulp thickened with tapioca or brown thickening, served with rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Mulligatawny Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the meat

  1. In a pan, fry the rabbit or chicken with butter and onions until browned, being careful not to burn the onions.

Stew and strain

  1. Transfer to a stewpan with carrots, celery, salt, and consomme. Stew for 45 minutes.

  2. Remove the meat, discard the bones, and return the carcass to the stock. Continue stewing until vegetables are soft.

  3. Strain the mixture through a fine colander. Pound the meat and vegetables (except carrots) and pass through a wire and hair sieve back into the stock.

  4. Cut the reserved meat into coconut-sized pieces and add to the soup.

Finish and serve

  1. Mix the curry powder with a little stock and add to the soup along with apple pulp, chutney, and thickening. Simmer until thickened.

  2. Stir in the cream and serve with well-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 their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

  3. Carrot + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,477 recipes

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

  4. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Celery + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Rabbit or chicken
Provides the meat and body of the soup, with bones adding flavour to the stock.
Onions
Browning in butter builds sweet, savoury depth in the base of the soup.
Curry powder
Supplies the spiced aroma that defines the soup.
Apple pulp
Adds sweetness and a soft fruity acidity that balances the curry spices.
Thickening
Starch that thickens the soup as it simmers.
Heavy cream
Adds richness and a smooth, mellow body at the end.

The step that matters

Browning the meat and onions. Onions scorch easily and turn bitter; cook them over steady heat until golden. Browning the meat in butter creates savoury flavour through the Maillard reaction, which later carries into the stock.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, butter, onion, carrot, celery, cream, rice):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, butter, onion, carrot, celery, cream, rice. 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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