Skip to main content
Main

Curry or Mulligatawney Soup

A spiced soup of veal, fowl, or rabbit with onions, curry powder, and optional citrus, served with rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Shallot and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,081 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Curry or Mulligatawney Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Cut the meat or poultry into pieces about 2 inches long and 1 inch wide.

Make the soup

  1. Fry the pieces in butter with the sliced onions until browned.

  2. Add enough gravy to cover the meat and the bruised shallots.

  3. Simmer for at least 30 minutes.

  4. Mix the curry powder and flour together, then season with cayenne and salt.

  5. Combine the mixture with cold broth or cream until smooth.

  6. Stir the mixture into the soup and let it stew gently until the meat is tender.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the juice of Seville orange or lemon just before serving.

  2. Serve with rice if desired.

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 + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Onion + shallottop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,431 recipes

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Veal, fowl, or rabbit
Provides the meat that becomes tender during slow stewing.
Onions
Browning in butter builds savoury depth and sweetness into the soup.
Butter
Fat for frying that carries flavour and helps the meat and onions brown.
Curry powder
Supplies the spiced, aromatic flavour that defines the soup.
Flour
Thickens the mixture so the broth becomes smooth and body-rich.
Cold broth or cream
Blended with the spice paste to loosen it, keeping it smooth when stirred in.

The step that matters

Stirring the curry paste into the soup. Mixing curry powder and flour with cold liquid first prevents lumps. Adding it straight to hot gravy can clump the flour, and the gentle stew lets the spices and thickening settle evenly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, butter, meat, shallot, flour, pepper, cream):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, butter, meat, shallot, flour, pepper, cream. 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.

More mulligatawny soup recipes

Clear 6 See all 171 →

You might also like

Rice FrittersRice Fritters84 recipesMeat CroquettesMeat Croquettes52 recipesVeal PattiesVeal Patties50 recipesSteamed RiceSteamed Rice48 recipes