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Cauliflower Soup, or Mullagatawny Maigre

A cauliflower soup flavored with curry, simmered with vegetables and optional Madeira, served with boiled rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Cauliflower and cucumber match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 584 recipes. Both carry 2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Cauliflower Soup, or Mullagatawny Maigre

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup base

  1. In a large pan, fry the sliced cauliflowers, onions, celery, cucumbers, garlic, and French beans in ½ cup of butter.

  2. Add 2 tablespoons of curry powder and mix well until the butter is melted.

  3. Pour in 8 cups of boiling water.

  4. Simmer for 3 hours until the mixture is a pulp.

  5. Strain the soup.

  6. Return it to the heat and add 2 teaspoons of salt.

Finish and serve

  1. Fry the additional sliced cauliflowers in ½ cup of butter, sprinkling with 1 tablespoon of curry powder while frying.

  2. Add the fried cauliflowers to the soup and simmer for 2-3 minutes before serving.

  3. Stir in a glass of Madeira before serving, if using.

  4. Serve with boiled rice, if using.

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. Cauliflower + cucumbertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together584 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Cauliflower + beanstop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together290 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Cucumber + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,556 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Cucumber + beanstop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together602 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

Cauliflowers
Form the bulk of the soup and break down into a thick pulp for body.
Onions
Add savory sweetness and aromatic depth as they soften in butter.
Butter
Carries the curry powder and vegetables, adding fat and rich flavor.
Curry powder
Provides the main spiced aroma, bloomed in fat to release its flavor.
Celery
Contributes aromatic flavor and moisture as it cooks down into the pulp.

The step that matters

Simmering until the mixture is a pulp. The long simmer breaks the vegetables down so the strained soup becomes smooth and thick. Stopping early leaves fibrous pieces and a thin texture.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cauliflower, onion, celery, cucumber, garlic, beans, butter):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Cuminfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cauliflower, onion, celery, cucumber, garlic, beans, butter. 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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