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Mulligatawny Soup

A rabbit soup with onions, spices, rice, and vegetables simmered in drippings and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Mulligatawny Soup

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Skin the rabbit, remove entrails, and cut into joints.

  2. Dice the carrot and turnip.

  3. Make a bouquet garni with parsley, thyme, marjoram, and bay leaves.

Make the soup

  1. In a saucepan, heat drippings, add rabbit, onions, salt, cloves, and pepper; fry gently for 20 minutes.

  2. Stir flour into the browned rabbit.

  3. Add vegetables, bouquet garni, and boiling water.

  4. Simmer until vegetables are tender enough to sieve.

Cook the rice

  1. Boil rice in 1 quart of boiling water with 2 teaspoons of salt for 10 minutes; drain.

  2. Grease a pot with drippings, return rice to it, cover, and place in a cool oven.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  5. Clove + thymetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Rabbit
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender and flavourful as it simmers in the broth.
Drippings
Fat for frying the rabbit and onions, carrying flavour and browning the meat.
Onions
Soften and sweeten during gentle frying, building the base flavour of the soup.
Flour
Stirred into the browned rabbit to thicken the soup slightly.
Carrot
Adds sweetness and body to the soup as it simmers until tender.
Turnip
Adds earthy flavour and body to the soup as it simmers until tender.

The step that matters

Simmer until vegetables are tender enough to sieve. Vegetables must be fully softened so they pass through a sieve smoothly. Under-cooked pieces stay firm and will not purée, leaving a gritty texture.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, clove, pepper, carrot, turnip, parsley, thyme):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, clove, pepper, carrot, turnip, parsley, thyme. 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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