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Mullagatawny Soup

A soup made with chicken, veal, onion, red pepper, carrots, celery, parsley, and curry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Mullagatawny Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Cut up the chicken and place it in a soup kettle with the veal, clove-studded onion, red pepper, soup bunch, and cold water.

  2. Remove the chicken when tender and let the soup continue boiling.

Make the curry base

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter and add the sliced onion; brown lightly.

  2. Stir in the flour and brown it carefully without burning.

  3. Add the curry powder, boiled rice, and teacup of broth; mix well.

  4. Return the chicken to the saucepan and simmer for about 15 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve in a tureen, pouring the broth over the chicken, which should be skimmed.

  2. If desired, serve the broth and curried chicken separately, adding a teaspoon of boiled rice to each soup plate.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Browned with the butter and onion, it thickens the soup and adds a toasty, nutty flavor.
Butter
Carries the browning of the onion and flour, adding richness and flavor to the curry base.
Curry powder
Blooms in the fat and broth to supply the spiced, aromatic character of the dish.
Boiled rice
Adds body and softness to the soup, thickening it slightly as it simmers.
Chicken
Provides the main protein and savory meaty flavor, with its cooking broth forming the soup base.

The step that matters

Browning the flour. Flour must brown gently in the butter until nutty without scorching, since burnt flour gives a bitter taste and dark specks, and undercooked flour leaves a raw, pasty flavor in the thickened soup.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, veal, onion, pepper, carrot, celery, parsley. 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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