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Mulligatawny Soup

A soup made with canned mutton or chicken, apples, turnip, onions, leeks, carrots, flour, curry powder, herbs, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and leek match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,046 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Mulligatawny Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Drain the canned mutton or chicken and place it in a basin with the warm water.

  2. Peel the apples, quarter them, remove the cores and slice them.

  3. Peel and chop the turnip.

  4. Peel and chop the onions.

  5. Wash the leeks, trim their tops and chop them.

  6. Wash, scrape and chop the carrots.

Fry the vegetables

  1. Heat 2 ounces of clarified fat in a saucepan and add the sliced apples.

  2. Add the turnip and onions, and stir the vegetables with a wooden spoon.

  3. Cook the vegetables for 10 minutes.

  4. Add the leeks and carrots, and stir the vegetables to mix.

  5. Let the vegetables fry for 10 minutes.

Simmer

  1. Add a sprig of parsley, a sprig of thyme, a sprig of marjoram, and two bay leaves tied together.

  2. Pour in half a pint of the liquid from the meat.

  3. Boil the mixture.

  4. Reduce the liquid to a quarter of a pint, stirring occasionally.

Finish

  1. Mix the flour and curry powder into a smooth paste with a little water.

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 + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Leek + carrottop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,310 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Onion + leektop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,326 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl butyrate (apple, fruity).

  5. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Canned mutton or chicken
Provides the main meaty flavour and body of the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup as its starch swells in the hot liquid.
Curry powder
Adds the spiced aroma and yellow colour that define the soup.
Onions
Soften in the fat to build a sweet, savoury base.
Apples
Add mild sweetness and acidity that balance the spices.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body to the vegetable base.

The step that matters

Mixing the flour and curry powder into a paste. Flour lumps if it meets hot liquid dry, because starch granules clump before they can separate. Mixing it smooth with a little water first lets each granule disperse evenly, so the soup thickens without lumps.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, turnip, onion, leek, carrot, flour, sugar):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Pumpkinfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, turnip, onion, leek, carrot, flour, sugar. 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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