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Mullagatawny Soup

A hearty soup made with tinned mutton, apples, onions, turnips, leeks, herbs, and curry powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 ↓

Mullagatawny Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the tinned mutton in 2 quarts of water.

  2. Fry the apples, onions, turnips, leeks, and herbs in a pot.

  3. Pour 1 pint of the soaking liquid over the fried vegetables.

  4. Boil for 30 minutes.

Make the soup

  1. Mix the flour and curry powder with cold water.

  2. Stir the mixture into the pot.

  3. Add the remaining water and the soaked mutton.

  4. Boil for 3 hours.

  5. Press the mixture through a sieve.

  6. Return the pressed mixture to the pot.

  7. Boil again.

  8. Add salt and a dash of lemon.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl butyrate (apple, fruity).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Leek + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together161 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Tinned mutton
Provides the meat that gives the soup its body and rich flavour.
Flour
Thickens the soup as it cooks, giving it a fuller texture.
Curry powder
Adds warm, spiced aroma and flavour to the broth.
Apples
Add natural sweetness and body to the vegetables once softened and pressed.
Turnips
Soften during long boiling and thicken the soup when pressed through a sieve.
Onions
Build savoury depth when fried at the start of the soup.

The step that matters

Mixing the flour and curry powder with cold water before stirring. Flour added directly to hot liquid clumps; mixing it with cold water first lets the starch disperse evenly so the soup thickens smoothly.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, onion, turnip, leek, flour, lemon, 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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