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Mulligatawny Soup

A spiced soup made with rabbit or mutton, vegetables, curry powder, and a flour roux, served with rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 8,002 recipes mention both. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Mulligatawny Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and brown

  1. Cut the rabbit into joints or the mutton into 1‑inch squares.

  2. In a pot, melt the butter and fry the meat and onion until browned.

Make the soup

  1. Heat the stock, then add the meat, onion, carrot, turnip, and herbs.

  2. Simmer for 1 hour.

  3. Mix the curry powder and flour with a little cold water, then stir into the soup.

  4. Add the minced fruit and simmer for another hour.

  5. Remove the meat, cut the best parts into small pieces, and sieve the remainder with the vegetables. Use the soup to help push them through the sieve.

Finish and serve

  1. Add salt and lemon juice, reheat, and return the pieces of meat to the soup.

  2. Serve with boiled rice on the side.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + rhubarbtop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together11 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  5. Flour + turniptop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned 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

Butter
Fat that carries the frying flavour and helps brown the meat and onion.
Flour
Thickens the soup slightly as it mixes with the curry powder and liquid.
Curry powder
Provides the warm spiced aroma that defines the soup.
Minced fruit
Adds sharp acidity that balances the rich stock and meat.
Rabbit or mutton
Supplies the meat and savoury richness that forms the body of the soup.

The step that matters

Frying the meat and onion until browned. Browning creates Maillard flavours in the meat and onion that carry into the stock; pale frying gives a flatter, less savoury soup.

Flavor stand-ins for the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Limeabout as good a flavor fit
  3. Coconutabout as good a flavor fit

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, onion, butter, flour, carrot, turnip, rhubarb. 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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