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Mullagatawny Soup

A spiced veal and chicken broth soup with vegetables, rice, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Mullagatawny Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Melt butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add sliced onions, celery, and carrot; fry slowly until light brown.

  3. Stir in flour and mix well. Add curry powder.

Make the broth

  1. Place knuckle of veal in cold water with a little salt.

  2. Skim the broth well.

  3. Add chopped carrot, onion, celery, parsley, and whole cloves to the broth.

  4. If available, add pieces of cold chicken.

  5. Simmer the broth for 3-4 hours.

  6. Strain and remove the fat.

Finish and serve

  1. Return the broth to the heat half an hour before serving.

  2. Add cold chicken, boiled rice, lemon juice, and the fried onion mixture.

  3. Serve the rice separately if preferred.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Fried slowly until light brown, they add sweetness and savory depth to the soup.
Butter
Carries the frying of the vegetables and adds richness to the base.
Flour
Stirred into the fried vegetables, it thickens the soup slightly.
Curry powder
Provides the spiced, aromatic flavor that defines the soup.
Knuckle of veal
Simmered for hours, it releases gelatin and flavor into the broth, giving body.
Boiled rice
Added near the end, it adds starchy body and makes the soup more filling.

The step that matters

Skimming the broth well. Skimming removes foam and impurities that would cloud the broth and taste bitter. Removing fat after straining keeps the soup clean and light.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, carrot, butter, flour, chicken, veal, parsley):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, carrot, butter, flour, chicken, veal, parsley. 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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