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Mulligatawney Soup

A hearty soup of veal or kid, chicken, vegetables, curry powder, rice, and butter or dripping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Mulligatawney Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the soup

  1. In a large pot, brown the chicken pieces in butter or dripping.

  2. Add the chopped carrots, turnips, onion, and celery.

  3. Pour in 3 quarts of water and bring to a boil. Skim off any scum that forms on the surface.

Simmer

  1. Mix the curry powder with a little cold stock or water, then add it to the pot along with the rice.

  2. Cover and simmer for 2 hours.

Serve

  1. Serve with boiled rice prepared in the Indian fashion.

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. Turnip + oniontop 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

Chicken
Browning the pieces in fat builds savory flavor in the broth and the meat cooks into tender pieces.
Veal or kid
Slow simmering breaks down connective tissue, giving the broth body and richness.
Curry powder
Bloom-like heating in liquid releases its aromatic spices, giving the soup its characteristic flavor.
Carrots
Sweetness and body as they soften and release their sugars into the broth.
Turnips
Mild sweetness and body as they soften during the long simmer.
Rice
Thickens the soup slightly as its starch releases during simmering.

The step that matters

Browning the chicken in butter or dripping. Browning creates deeper flavor through the Maillard reaction. Pale, steamed pieces yield a flatter broth, so the pot should not be crowded.

Swap the turnip

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Tomatofits about as well
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, chicken, butter, carrot, onion, celery, 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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