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Mulligatawny Soup

A hearty soup of chicken, veal, onions, curry, and lemon, simmered in stock and flavored with Worcestershire, anchovy paste, and port.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and anchovy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,057 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Mulligatawny Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Combine the chicken, veal, and water in a large saucepan.

  2. Add salt and boil for three hours or until reduced by one-third.

Make the curry base

  1. Melt the butter in a hot frying pan.

  2. Fry the chopped onions until soft.

  3. Mix the curry powder into the stock.

  4. Add the stock to the onions.

  5. Combine this mixture with the soup.

Finish and serve

  1. Adjust seasoning.

  2. Add Worcestershire sauce, anchovy paste, warmed port or sherry, and lemon slices to the soup before serving.

  3. Serve with rice if 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. Sauce + anchovytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  3. Butter + anchovytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Chicken + vealtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,243 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-butanedione (buttery, creamy).

  5. Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 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

Chicken
Gives the soup its meaty body and savoury flavour as it simmers.
Veal knuckle
Adds gelatin and depth, giving the broth a richer, silkier body.
Onions
Soften and sweeten as they fry, forming the aromatic base of the soup.
Curry powder
Provides the warm spiced aroma that defines the soup.
Anchovy paste
Adds savoury umami depth that rounds out the broth without tasting fishy.
Lemons
Add bright acidity that balances the rich, spiced broth.

The step that matters

Reduce the stock by one-third. Simmering for three hours concentrates flavour and extracts gelatin from the bones, so the broth tastes richer. Stopping early leaves it thin and weak.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, veal, butter, onion, sauce, anchovy, sherry):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Grapefits about as well
  3. Plumfits less well
  4. Avocadofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, veal, butter, onion, sauce, anchovy, sherry. 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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