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Good Vegetable Mullagatawny

A thick vegetable soup with curry, onions, marrow, cucumbers, and apples, simmered and strained.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and rice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 734 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Good Vegetable Mullagatawny

2 quarts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. In a large saucepan, melt the butter until it is about to brown.

  2. Add the sliced onions, vegetable marrow, cucumbers, and acid apples.

  3. Stir often and cook over low heat until the vegetables are tender.

  4. Mix in the curry powder and salt, and let the vegetables stew for 20 to 30 minutes.

  5. Gradually add enough boiling water to just cover the vegetables.

Strain and finish

  1. When the mixture is nearly a pulp, press it through a fine sieve with a wooden spoon.

  2. Heat the strained mixture in a clean saucepan, adding enough liquid to make 2 quarts.

  3. Adjust seasoning with salt, cayenne, or acid as needed, and serve hot.

  4. If butter appears on the surface, skim it off or stir in the arrowroot mixture to absorb it.

  5. Serve with rice if desired, though the soup is thick enough to stand alone.

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. Cucumber + ricetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together734 recipes

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

  2. Cucumber + arrowroottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together28 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Onion + cucumbertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,050 recipes

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

  4. Rice + arrowroottop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together200 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds richness and a nutty flavour as it is heated close to browning.
Vegetable marrow
Breaks down into the bulk of the soup, giving body and a mild sweetness.
Cucumbers
Soften when stewed, contributing moisture and a light, fresh body to the soup.
Acid apples
Add tartness and natural pectin that help the soup thicken as it cooks down.
Curry powder
Supplies the warm, aromatic spice profile that defines the soup.

The step that matters

Stewing the vegetables gently until they collapse. Cooking over low heat with frequent stirring lets the vegetables soften and release water without scorching on the pan base. Curry powder and butter can burn at high heat, which would leave a bitter taste in the finished soup.

Swap the arrowroot

The recipe marks arrowroot as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, onion, cucumber, apple, rice, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Arrowrootthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion, cucumber, apple, rice, 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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