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Madras Mulligatawny Curry

A spiced curry made with mustard oil, water, ground onions, turmeric, chilies, and garlic.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

Madras Mulligatawny Curry

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 curry base

  1. Heat the mustard oil in a pot.

  2. Add the ground onions and sauté until golden.

  3. Stir in the ground turmeric, ground chilies, and garlic.

  4. Pour in the water and bring to a boil.

Simmer

  1. Simmer for 10 minutes to blend the flavors.

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. Mustard + turmerictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,279 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Mustard + garlictop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  4. Turmeric + garlictop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,363 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Mustard + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Mustard oil
Carries fat-soluble flavor and adds a sharp, pungent aroma to the curry.
Ground onions
Sautéing until golden adds sweetness and body to the base.
Ground turmeric
Gives the curry its yellow color and an earthy flavor.
Ground chilies
Provides the heat that defines the curry's character.
Garlic
Adds a savory aroma that deepens the base.

The step that matters

Sauté the onions until golden. Onions cooked too briefly taste raw and sharp, while overcooked ones turn bitter. Cooking them gently until golden breaks down their sugars, building sweetness and a rounded base for the rest of the curry.

Swap the turmeric

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Cuminfits better
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Turmericthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mustard, onion, garlic. 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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