Skip to main content
Main

Mulligatawny Soup

A spiced soup made with rabbit or veal, ham, onions, turnip, apples, curry paste, coconut, flour, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Onion and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,585 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Mulligatawny Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the desiccated coconut in the stock for at least 1 hour.

  2. In a pan, heat the butter and fry the ham and rabbit (cut into pieces).

  3. Add the sliced onions and fry until browned.

  4. Add the chopped apples, curry paste, and curry powder; sauté for 20 minutes.

Make the soup

  1. Strain the mixture and add the stock, seasoning, and lemon juice; boil gently for 1 hour.

  2. Mix 2 tablespoons of flour with a little cold stock and add to the soup; boil again.

  3. Add small pieces of veal, rabbit, or fowl to the strained stock.

Serve

  1. Serve with 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. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + coconuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Apple + coconuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together274 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylethanol (rose, floral).

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

Rabbit or veal
Provides the main meat and savory body of the soup.
Butter
Fat that carries flavor and helps the onions brown.
Onions
Browning builds sweet, deep savory flavor in the base.
Sour apples
Add tartness and sweetness that soften into the soup.
Flour
Starch thickens the stock so it has a fuller body.
Desiccated coconut
Soaking in stock releases flavor and adds richness and body.

The step that matters

Mixing the flour into the soup. Flour mixed with cold stock first disperses evenly and avoids lumps. Boiling again cooks the starch, which thickens the soup and removes the raw floury taste.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, ham, onion, turnip, butter, flour, coconut):

  1. Avocadofits about as well
  2. Lemonfits about as well
  3. Limefits about as well
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, ham, onion, turnip, butter, flour, coconut. 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.

More mulligatawny soup recipes

Clear 6 See all 171 →

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesTurnip SoupTurnip Soup43 recipesApple SoupApple Soup33 recipesRabbit PattiesRabbit Patties6 recipes