Skip to main content
Main

Mullagatawny Soup

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 the onions.

  2. Fry the sliced onions gently in butter until amber-colored.

  3. Remove the onions and set aside.

  4. In the same pan, brown the meat lightly in more butter.

  5. Place the browned meat on top of the onions.

  6. Pour 1 quart of boiling stock over the meat and onions.

  7. Stew gently for 45 minutes to 1 hour.

Make the soup

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

  2. Add 2 ½ pints of stock to the strained mixture.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  4. Mix curry powder and browned flour with a little cold water or broth.

  5. Stir the mixture into the boiling soup.

  6. Return the meat to the pot.

  7. Simmer for 20 minutes or until tender.

  8. Add lemon juice just before serving.

Serve

  1. Serve hot with boiled rice.

  2. Optionally, add pickled mango strips to the soup for extra flavor.

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
Soften and sweeten as they fry to amber, building a deep base flavor for the soup.
Butter
Carries the frying and browning, adding richness and savory flavor to the onions and meat.
Rabbit
Provides the meat that becomes tender during stewing and gives the soup its body.
Browned flour
Thickens the soup and adds a toasted, nutty flavor.
Curry powder
Supplies the spiced aroma and flavor that defines the soup.

The step that matters

Stirring the curry powder and browned flour into the boiling soup. Mixing them first with a little cold liquid keeps the flour from clumping. Adding them to boiling soup and stirring well lets the starch thicken evenly and cooks the raw spice taste out of the curry powder.

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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesRice FrittersRice Fritters84 recipesSteamed RiceSteamed Rice48 recipesRice Griddle CakesRice Griddle Cakes28 recipes