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Mullagatawny Soup

A rabbit soup flavored with curry powder, browned flour, and lemon, served over boiled rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and mango match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 183 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Mullagatawny Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Slice and fry the onions gently in butter until amber-colored. Remove and set aside.

  2. In the same pan, add more butter and brown the meat.

  3. Once browned, place the meat on top of the onions and pour in 1 quart of boiling stock.

  4. Stew gently for 45 minutes to 1 hour.

Make the curry soup

  1. Strain the stock and onions through a fine sieve.

  2. Add 2 ½ pints of stock to the strained mixture and bring to a boil.

  3. Mix curry powder with browned flour and a little cold water or broth, then stir into the boiling stock.

  4. Return the meat to the pot and simmer for 20 minutes or until tender.

  5. Add lemon juice just before serving.

Serve

  1. Serve hot with boiled rice and optional pickled mango strips.

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. Rice + mangotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together183 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + mangotop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together302 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Lemon + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Rabbit + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together252 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

Onions
Fried slowly to amber, they build a deep, sweet, savory base for the soup.
Butter
Fat for frying the onions and browning the meat, adding richness and browned flavor.
Rabbit
Main meat that browns and then stews until tender, giving the soup its body and flavor.
Stock
Liquid that cooks the meat and forms the body of the soup.
Curry powder
Supplies the spiced aroma and flavor that define the dish.
Browned flour
Thickens the soup and adds a nutty, toasted flavor.

The step that matters

Adding the curry and flour mixture to the boiling stock. Curry powder and flour mixed with a little cold liquid first disperse evenly; dumping them in dry or into a rolling boil can cause lumps and uneven thickening.

Swap the mango

The recipe marks mango as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, butter, rabbit, flour, lemon, rice):

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Avocadofits about as well
  3. Limefits about as well
  4. Mangothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, rabbit, flour, lemon, rice. 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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