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Mulligatawny Soup

A chicken and rice soup flavored with curry powder, turnip, and thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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

Make the broth

  1. Boil the chicken until fully cooked to make 5 pints of broth.

Cook the soup

  1. In the broth, cook the rice and diced turnip until tender.

  2. Add the chicken meat cut into small squares.

  3. Stir in the curry powder and season with salt and pepper.

  4. Thicken the soup with flour as desired.

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. Turnip + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Rice + turniptop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together824 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,252 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Rice + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Supplies the meat and rich, savory flavor that the broth carries into the soup.
Rice
Its starch softens and swells in the broth, adding body and thickness.
Turnip
Softens during cooking and adds a mild, slightly sweet flavor and tender texture.
Curry powder
Blends warm spices that give the soup its characteristic aroma and flavor.
Flour
Its starch swells in the hot liquid, thickening the soup into a heavier consistency.

The step that matters

Thicken the soup with flour. Flour lumps easily if added dry. Whisk it into a little cold broth first, then stir it in. Simmer long enough for the starch to thicken fully and lose its raw taste.

Swap the turnip

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, rice, pepper, 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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