Name: Mulligatawney Soup
Ingredients: 1 quart chicken, veal, or calf's head broth; 1 small onion, minced; a pinch of mace; ½ cup soaked rice; juice of 1 lemon; 1 tablespoon brown roux; 1 teaspoon curry powder; salt to taste; 1 teacup strained tomato juice

Why it works: Chicken and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,769 recipes. Both carry (e,e)-2,4-decadienal, which smells fatty, deep fried. The science ↓

Mulligatawney Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the soup

Cook the rice in the broth with the onion and tomato juice for 30 minutes.
Stir in the mace, lemon juice, brown roux, curry powder, and salt.
Boil for 1 minute and serve.

Serve

Serve with ice-cold bananas.

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.

Chicken + ricetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,769 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).
Rice + tomatotop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,065 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together20,633 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Chicken + tomatotop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,031 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,814 recipes

Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken, veal, or calf's head broth: Provides the liquid base and savory flavor that the other ingredients cook into.
Soaked rice: Softens as it cooks and releases starch, adding body to the soup.
Brown roux: Thickens the soup and adds a toasted, nutty depth of flavor.
Curry powder: Adds warm, aromatic spice flavor to the soup.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the flavors of the soup.
Strained tomato juice: Adds acidity, color, and savory sweetness to the broth.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, onion, rice, lemon, tomato):

Garlicfits better
Corianderfits better
Thymefits better
Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, onion, rice, lemon, tomato. 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.