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Mulligatawny Soup

A chicken stock soup with onion, rice, curry powder, lemon, butter, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 ↓

Mulligatawny Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Strain the stock from the chicken into a soup pot.

  2. Add the onion and rice, then simmer for 40 minutes until the rice is tender.

Finish

  1. Mix the curry powder with the lemon juice.

  2. Stir in the butter rolled in flour, then bring to a boil.

  3. Serve hot.

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

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

  2. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

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

  3. Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

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

  4. Rice + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Softens as it simmers, adding body and making the soup heartier.
Flour
Thickens the soup when cooked with butter, giving it a fuller body.
Butter
Adds richness and carries the flour into the soup smoothly.
Curry powder
Supplies the spiced, aromatic flavour that defines the soup.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the spices.
Onion
Softens and sweetens as it cooks, forming the savoury base.

The step that matters

Stir in the butter rolled in flour. The flour must be evenly dispersed to avoid lumps. Its starch thickens the soup only once it reaches a boil, so the soup should be brought to a full boil after adding it.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Mangofits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, onion, rice, butter, flour. 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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