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Mulligatawny Soup

A spiced vegetable soup with apples, onions, carrots, turnips, celery, and chicken broth, finished with curry powder and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Mulligatawny Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Combine chopped apples, onions, carrots, turnips, and celery with chicken broth in a large pot.

  2. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer about 30 minutes.

  3. Stir in curry powder and flour, mixing well, then allow soup to boil for an additional 3 to 4 minutes.

Strain and serve

  1. Strain soup through a colander and serve with roast chicken, boiled rice, or toasted bread 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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Chicken + ricetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,769 recipes

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

  5. Onion + turniptop 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

Apples
Break down while simmering to add body and a subtle sweetness to the broth.
Onions
Release sugars and savory flavor as they soften, forming the base of the soup.
Curry powder
Supplies the spice blend that gives the soup its characteristic aroma and flavor.
Flour
Lightly thickens the broth so it has more body.

The step that matters

Adding the flour with the curry powder. Flour stirred into hot liquid can clump if not mixed well. Stirring thoroughly before the extra boil lets it dissolve evenly and thicken the soup smoothly.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, carrot, turnip, celery, chicken, flour, rice):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, carrot, turnip, celery, chicken, flour, 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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