Skip to main content
Main

Mullagatawny Soup

A curry-flavored soup with onions, garlic, almonds, lemon pickle or mango juice, fowl or rabbit, bacon, and stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Mullagatawny Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the soup

  1. Slice and fry the onions until golden brown.

  2. In a stewpan, cook the bacon until crisp.

  3. Add the rabbit or fowl pieces and brown them slightly.

Simmer and finish

  1. Stir in the fried onions, garlic, and stock, then simmer gently until the meat is tender.

  2. Skim the surface carefully, and when the meat is done, mix the curry powder into a smooth paste.

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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Garlic + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,893 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Clove + garlictop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,368 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Almond + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 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

Onions
Fried until golden, they add sweetness and depth of flavour to the stock.
Bacon
Rendered fat cooks the pieces and adds savoury, smoky flavour to the soup.
Rabbit or fowl
Simmered until tender, the meat becomes the main body and flavour of the soup.
Stock
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavours and cooks the meat.
Curry powder
Blooms into a smooth paste that gives the soup its spiced aroma and warmth.

The step that matters

Mixing the curry powder into a smooth paste. Curry powder added as dry powder can clump and taste raw. Mixing it into a paste first lets it disperse evenly and release its aroma into the soup.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, garlic, almond, lemon, rabbit):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, garlic, almond, lemon, rabbit. 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

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesAlmond SoupAlmond Soup60 recipesAlmond SaladAlmond Salad6 recipesRabbit PattiesRabbit Patties6 recipes