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Mulligatawny Soup

A hearty veal and fowl soup seasoned with curry, herbs, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Mulligatawny Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Break the bones of the veal and wash the veal.

  2. Boil the veal in cold water with the carrot, turnip, sweet herbs, and whole white pepper for 3 hours.

  3. Strain the broth.

Brown the fowl

  1. Clean and skin the fowl, then cut the fowl into pieces.

  2. Brown the fowl and sliced onions in butter, stirring constantly to prevent burning.

  3. Add the browned fowl and onions to the strained soup.

  4. Let the soup settle.

  5. Skim the soup.

  6. Boil gently for nearly 1 hour.

Season and serve

  1. In a bowl, mix curry powder, a little browned flour, Cayenne pepper, lemon juice, and salt to taste.

  2. Wet the mixture with a little soup to prevent lumping.

  3. Add the mixture to the soup.

  4. Boil until the fowl is cooked through, about 30 minutes.

  5. Serve in a tureen.

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 + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Turnip + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Knuckle of veal
Long simmering releases gelatin and flavour, giving the broth body and depth.
Fowl
Supplies meat and rich flavour to the soup as it cooks through in the broth.
Sliced onions
Browning in butter builds sweetness and savoury depth into the soup base.
Fresh butter
Carries the browning of the fowl and onions and adds richness.
Curry powder
Provides the spiced aroma that defines the soup.
Browned flour
Lightly thickens the soup and adds a toasted, nutty note.

The step that matters

Wetting the curry mixture before adding it. Spices and flour clump when dropped dry into hot liquid. Mixing them first with a little soup disperses them evenly so the soup stays smooth and the seasoning distributes throughout.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, carrot, turnip, onion, butter, flour, pepper):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, carrot, turnip, onion, butter, flour, pepper. 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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