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Mullagatawny Soup

A Scottish soup made from calf's head, onions, cloves, curry powder, lemon, and egg-based brain balls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Mullagatawny Soup

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the stock

  1. Cook the calf's head in cold water with cloves for 10 minutes.

  2. Sauté the chopped onion in a little beef drippings.

  3. Add the sautéed onion to the stock.

Season and simmer

  1. Mix curry powder, salt, pepper, and sugar.

  2. Thin the mixture with some broth and add to the stock.

  3. Stir in the lemon juice.

  4. Simmer until the meat is tender.

Prepare the meat and brain balls

  1. Remove the head.

  2. Cut the meat into small pieces.

  3. Return the meat to the soup.

  4. Mix the brains with 1 raw egg and a little bread crumbs.

  5. Roll the mixture into balls.

Serve

  1. Drop the balls into the soup just before serving.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Onion + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  5. Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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 meat and gelatin that give the soup body and richness as it simmers.
Curry powder
Supplies the warm, aromatic spice flavour that defines the soup.
Raw egg
Binds the brain mixture so the balls hold their shape in the soup.
Onions
Add sweetness and savoury depth when sautéed in drippings before going into the stock.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich stock and balances the spices.

The step that matters

Simmer until the meat is tender. The calf's head must cook long enough for collagen to break down into gelatin, which gives tender meat and a silky body to the broth. Stopping early leaves tough meat and a thin soup.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clove, pepper, lemon, sugar, beef, egg, bread):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, pepper, lemon, sugar, beef, egg, bread. 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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