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Mullegetawny Soup

A hearty soup made with veal, ham, onions, spices, curry powder, and chicken, served with rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and chicken are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,814 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, sweet. The science ↓

Mullegetawny Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Combine veal, ham, whole white pepper, sliced onions, and mace in a large pot. Stew for 30 minutes.

  2. Add boiling water to the pot and boil, stirring occasionally, until the soup is rich and flavorful.

Make the soup

  1. Melt a piece of butter in a separate pan until frothy, then stir in a handful of flour until smooth.

  2. Add the soup to the flour mixture, bring to a boil, and strain into a clean pot.

  3. Mix the curry powder into the strained soup and boil until smooth and rich.

  4. Cut the fowl or chickens into small pieces and sauté them in a little butter until cooked through.

  5. Drain the butter from the chicken and add the pieces to the soup. Let it boil together.

Serve

  1. Serve the soup with rice on the side.

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. Onion + chickentop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  2. White pepper + macetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Veal + chickentop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,243 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-butanedione (buttery, creamy).

  5. Ham + chickentop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,497 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Veal
Gives the stock body and savory depth as it stews.
Flour
Thickens the butter base so it helps give the soup body.
Curry powder
Provides the spiced flavor that defines the soup.
Fowl or chickens
Adds meat to the soup, cooked through before it joins the pot.
Butter
Carries the flour roux and gives richness to the sautéed chicken.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour into the butter. Stirring flour into melted butter until smooth forms a roux. Cooking it fully before adding liquid removes raw flour taste and keeps the soup from clumping.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, ham, onion, mace, butter, flour, chicken):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, ham, onion, mace, butter, flour, chicken. 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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