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Mulioatawney Soup

A soup made from calf's head and cow heel, flavored with curry, cayenne, turmeric, onions, and Harvey's sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and turmeric are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,478 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Mulioatawney Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat and stock

  1. Place the cleaned calf's head and cow heel in a well-tinned saucepan and boil until tender.

  2. Let the meat cool, then cut the meat from the bones into slices.

  3. Fry the sliced meat in butter.

  4. Stew the bones of the head and heel for several hours.

  5. Strain the bones and let the liquid cool to remove the fat.

Make the soup

  1. Slice the onions, flour them, and fry the floured onions in butter until brown.

  2. Add the curry powder, cayenne pepper, salt, and optional turmeric to the soup.

  3. Boil gently for about 1½ hours.

  4. Add Harvey's sauce and serve.

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. Pepper + turmerictop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Onion + turmerictop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,913 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Calf's head
Provides the main body of meat and gelatinous texture in the soup.
Cow heel
Adds collagen from bone and connective tissue, which gives the stock body and a rich mouthfeel.
Onions
Browned in butter after flouring, adding sweetness and depth of flavour to the soup.
Curry powder
Supplies the warm, aromatic spice character that defines the soup.
Butter
Fat used for frying the meat and onions, adding richness and browning.

The step that matters

Fry the floured onions until brown. Flour coats the onion slices so they brown evenly in butter. Stopping too early leaves a raw, flat flavour, while over-browning turns them bitter and dark.

Swap the turmeric

The recipe marks turmeric as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, onion, pepper, sauce):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Turmericthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion, pepper, sauce. 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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