Skip to main content
Main

Mullagatawny Soup

A hearty soup made with chicken, veal bones, onions, spices, and curry powder, served with meat and rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Chicken and beef match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,148 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓

Mullagatawny Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. In a large pot, combine the chicken, veal bones, onions, beef drippings, cloves, whole peppers, apples or lemon juice, and cold water.

  2. Add curry powder, salt, and sugar, then bring to a boil.

  3. Reduce heat and simmer until the meat is tender.

Strain and serve

  1. Remove the meat, strain the soup, and serve the meat with the strained soup.

  2. Serve with rice.

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 + beeftop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,148 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Clove + appletop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,774 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken or fowl
Provides the meat and body for the soup as it simmers and becomes tender.
Veal bones
Release gelatin and flavor into the water, giving the broth body and richness.
Curry powder
Supplies the spiced, aromatic character that defines the soup.
Sour apples
Add acidity that balances the rich broth and the sweetness of the sugar.

The step that matters

Simmer until the meat is tender. Boiling hard instead of keeping the liquid at a gentle simmer can toughen the meat and cloud the broth. A gentle simmer lets collagen in the bones and connective tissue slowly break down into gelatin, giving a tender result and a clearer, fuller-bodied soup.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, veal, onion, beef, clove, pepper, sugar):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Avocadofits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, veal, onion, beef, clove, pepper, sugar. 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.

You might also like

Beef, Mutton, or Veal BrothBeef, Mutton, or Veal Broth6 recipesChicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipes