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Mullagatawny Soup

A hearty veal and fowl soup flavored with curry powder, brown flour, 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 ↓

Mullagatawny Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Break the bones of the veal and cut the meat into pieces.

  2. Boil the veal in 3 to 4 quarts of cold water with the carrot, turnip, sweet herbs, and whole white pepper for 3 hours.

  3. Strain the broth.

Brown and simmer

  1. In a stewpan, brown the fowl pieces and sliced onions in the butter, stirring constantly to prevent burning.

  2. Add the browned fowl and onions to the strained soup and let it settle before skimming off the fat.

  3. Boil gently for nearly 1 hour.

Season and serve

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

  2. Wet the mixture with a little soup to prevent lumps, then add it to the soup.

  3. Continue boiling until the fowl is cooked through, about 30 minutes, and 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

Veal knuckle
Gives the broth its body and rich, savoury flavour as it simmers for hours.
Fowl
Adds meat and savour to the soup, cooked through in the broth.
Onions
Browned in butter, they add sweetness and depth to the soup's base.
Fresh butter
Carries the browning of the fowl and onions, adding richness and fat.
Curry powder
Supplies the spiced aroma that defines the soup.
Browned flour
Thickens the soup slightly and adds a toasted, nutty colour and flavour.

The step that matters

Adding the curry mixture. Spices and flour clump easily in hot liquid. Wetting them into a smooth paste with a little soup first keeps them dispersed, so the soup thickens evenly without lumps.

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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