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Mulligatawny Soup

A spiced vegetable soup with egg whites, lemon juice, and rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,366 recipes. Both carry (e,e)-2,4-decadienal, which smells fatty, deep fried. The science ↓

Mulligatawny Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Combine vegetables, curry powder, sugar, and salt in a saucepan.

  2. Bring to a boil and simmer for 3 hours.

  3. Let the mixture cool.

  4. Whisk in the beaten egg whites until just before boiling.

  5. Remove from heat and let stand for 20 minutes.

  6. Strain the soup through a warm, clean cloth.

Serve

  1. Reheat for serving.

  2. Add lemon juice just before serving.

  3. 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. Lemon + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Sugar + ricetop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Egg whites
Coagulate as they heat, trapping fine particles so the strained soup runs clear.
Curry powder
Supplies the main spiced aroma and flavour of the soup.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the soup's rich, spiced flavour.
Patna rice
Provides a starchy, mild base served alongside the soup to soak up its liquid.

The step that matters

Whisking in the egg whites. Egg whites must be whisked in before the mixture reaches boiling and then heated gently, so they set into fine curds that clarify the soup. Boiling too early or too hard leaves cloudiness and breaks up the clumps that trap the sediment.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, egg, rice):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits about as well
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, 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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