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Mulligatawny Soup

A soup made with water, fowl or rabbit, shallots, mace, Cayenne pepper, onions, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,431 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Mulligatawny Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fowl

  1. Parboil the fowls or rabbits in water.

  2. Remove the meat from the bones and add the bones and livers back to the water.

Simmer the soup

  1. Add shallots, mace, salt, and Cayenne pepper.

  2. Simmer for 1 hour and 15 minutes over low heat.

Cook the onions

  1. In a separate pan, sauté the onions in fresh butter until soft.

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. Shallot + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  3. Shallot + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Rabbit + shallottop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together157 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Rabbit + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,292 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Fowls or rabbits
Provide the meat, and the bones and livers add body and savory depth to the broth.
Shallots
Add a mild, aromatic onion flavor that builds the base of the soup.
Mace
Adds a warm, aromatic spice flavor to the broth.
Onions
Softened in butter, they add sweetness and body to the dish.
Fresh butter
Carries the onions as they soften and adds richness.

The step that matters

Sautéing the onions until soft. Cooking over moderate heat softens the onions and draws out their natural sugars slowly. Too much heat browns them quickly, which turns them bitter and can scorch the butter.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, shallot, pepper, onion, butter):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, shallot, pepper, onion, butter. 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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