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Mullagatawny Soup, Vegetable

A vegetable soup with marrows, cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, curry powder, and veal stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and rice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and 734 recipes mention both. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Mullagatawny Soup, Vegetable

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Pare the vegetable marrows and cucumbers, cut them lengthwise into slips, remove their seeds, and dice them.

  2. Pare and core the sour apples or tomatoes.

  3. Slice the Spanish onions.

Make the soup

  1. In a large stewpan, fry the onions in butter until slightly browned.

  2. Add the diced vegetables before the butter darkens, and stir gently.

  3. Shake the pan frequently.

  4. Stew over low heat until half cooked.

  5. Add 2 to 3 tablespoons of curry powder.

  6. Continue to stew until the vegetables are soft.

  7. Pour in enough boiling veal stock to cover the vegetables.

  8. Strain through a coarse sieve, pressing the pulp with a wooden spoon.

  9. Add more stock or water as needed for the desired soup quantity.

  10. Season with salt, cayenne, and lemon juice.

  11. If necessary, thicken with a little ground rice or arrowroot.

Serve

  1. Serve with rice if desired.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Cucumber + ricetop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together734 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Cucumber + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together6,050 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together10,433 recipes

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

  4. Cucumber + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together2,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Lemon + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together4,366 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Carries the onion flavour and browns the onions at the start of the soup.
Spanish onions
Soften and brown in butter to build the sweet, savoury base of the soup.
Vegetable marrows
Bulk out the soup and soften into a tender, moist body as they stew.
Cucumbers
Add moisture and a mild, fresh body as they soften during stewing.
Sour apples or tomatoes
Add acidity and fruitiness that balance the richness of butter and curry.
Curry powder
Provides the spiced aroma and colour that define the soup.

The step that matters

Frying the onions in butter. Butter darkens and can burn if overheated, which turns the flavour bitter. Onions should be only lightly browned before the vegetables go in, so the soup tastes sweet rather than scorched.

Flavor stand-ins for the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, onion, butter, veal, lemon, rice):

  1. Avocadobetter flavor fit
  2. Limebetter flavor fit
  3. Coconutbetter flavor fit
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, onion, butter, veal, lemon, rice. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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