Skip to main content
Main

Mulligatawny Soup

A hearty soup made with chicken, veal, onions, curry powder, and lemon, finished with Worcestershire sauce, anchovy paste, and port.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 chicken, veal, water, and salt in a large saucepan.

  2. Boil for three hours or until reduced by one-third.

Make the curry base

  1. Melt butter in a hot frying pan.

  2. Fry the chopped onions until soft.

  3. Mix curry powder with half a pint of the stock.

  4. Add the mixture to the onions and combine with the soup.

  5. Taste the soup and adjust seasoning as needed.

Finish and serve

  1. If desired, add parboiled rice to the soup before finishing.

  2. Before serving, add Worcestershire sauce, anchovy paste, warmed port or sherry, and lemon slices to each portion.

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 main meaty body and savoury flavour as it simmers.
Veal knuckle
Adds gelatin from the bones, giving the broth richness and a silky body.
Butter
Carries the curry powder and softens the onions, spreading fat-soluble flavour through the soup.
Red onions
Soften and sweeten as they fry, forming the aromatic base of the soup.
Curry powder
Provides the main spice aroma and warm flavour that defines the soup.
Anchovy paste
Adds deep savoury umami that rounds out the broth without tasting fishy.

The step that matters

Adding the curry powder to the stock. Curry powder is fat-soluble, so blooming it in fat or mixing it with hot stock helps release its aromatic compounds. Adding it raw or in cold liquid leaves the spices dusty and less fragrant.

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.

More mulligatawny soup recipes

Clear 6 See all 171 →

You might also like

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCreamed ChickenCreamed Chicken89 recipes