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Mulligatawny Soup

A spiced soup with butter, broth, curry, vegetables, ham, and rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 10,173 recipes mention both. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Mulligatawny Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup base

  1. Melt the butter in a stewpan over medium heat for about 20 minutes.

  2. Add the sliced onions, apples, carrot, turnips, celery, ham, cloves, mace, parsley, and thyme.

  3. Pour in 1 pint of broth and let it simmer for 20 minutes.

  4. Stir in the curry powder, curry paste, and flour, mixing well.

  5. Add 6 quarts of broth and bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer.

Prepare the rice

  1. For the rice, wash it in four separate waters, then boil in plenty of salted water for 20 minutes.

  2. Drain the rice and place it in front of the fire for 2 minutes, stirring with a fork before serving.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together21,601 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Fat that carries the curry flavours and enriches the soup's body.
Curry powder
Provides the main spiced aroma and flavour of the soup.
Flour
Thickens the broth slightly, giving it body as it cooks.
Onions
Build sweetness and savoury depth as they soften in the fat.
Apples
Add a mild sweetness and fruity note that balances the curry spices.
Ham
Adds savoury, meaty flavour to the broth.

The step that matters

Stirring in the curry powder, curry paste, and flour. Spices and flour need to be cooked briefly in the fat before liquid is added; this blooms the curry's aroma and prevents raw flour taste or lumps in the soup.

Flavor stand-ins for the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, onion, carrot, turnip, celery, ham):

  1. Lemonbetter flavor fit
  2. Limebetter flavor fit
  3. Avocadobetter flavor fit
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, onion, carrot, turnip, celery, ham. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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