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Mulligatawny Soup

A hearty beef soup with liver, root vegetables, leeks, celery, onions, and bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and leek match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,046 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Mulligatawny Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Put 4 quarts of water and 6 pounds of beef near the fire, and skim when nearly boiling.

  2. Add 1½ tablespoons of coarse sea salt, ½ pound of liver, 2 carrots, 4 turnips, 8 young leeks (or 2 old), 1 head of celery, and 2 onions (one burnt with a clove in each).

  3. Simmer for 4 to 5 hours, adding cold water as needed.

Serve

  1. Remove some fat, place slices of bread in a tureen, and layer half of the vegetables and half of the broth over it.

  2. Serve the meat separately with the remaining vegetables.

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. Turnip + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + leektop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,310 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Gives the broth its rich, savoury body as it simmers for hours.
Leeks
Add mild onion-like sweetness and aroma to the broth.
Onions
Add sweetness and aroma; the burnt one deepens the broth's colour and flavour.
Bread
Soaks up broth in the tureen, giving the soup body and a soft texture.

The step that matters

Skimming the water as it nears boiling. Skimming removes foam and loose proteins that would otherwise cloud the broth and add off flavours, so a clear, clean-tasting soup results.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, liver, carrot, turnip, leek, celery, onion):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, liver, carrot, turnip, leek, celery, onion. 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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