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
Prepare the base
Cut the veal into pieces and place in a stewpan with butter, ham, carrot, turnip, onions, apples, celery, leek, parsley, thyme, bay leaf, mace, cloves, and water.
Set the stewpan over high heat, stirring occasionally until the bottom is covered with a brown glaze.
Make the soup
Add curry powder, curry paste (if using), and flour, stirring well.
Fill the stewpan with water, add salt, sugar, and pepper, and bring to a boil.
Reduce heat and let it simmer for 2.5 hours.
Strain the soup through a fine sieve into a tureen.
Serve
Serve with trimmed pieces of veal and plain boiled rice.
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.
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Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairsAroma overlapstrongMentioned together10,173 recipes
Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
-
Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairsAroma overlapstrongMentioned together8,002 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
-
Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairsAroma overlapmoderateMentioned together4,418 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
-
Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairsAroma overlapstrongMentioned together7,585 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
-
Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairsAroma overlapmoderateMentioned 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
- Veal knuckle
- Releases gelatin and savoury meat flavour into the long-simmered broth, giving body.
- Flour
- Thickens the soup slightly and helps the curry powder bloom and coat the solids.
- Curry powder
- Provides the main spiced aroma and flavour that defines the soup.
- Apples
- Add natural sweetness and acidity that balance the spices and savoury broth.
- Onions
- Build sweetness and savoury depth as they soften and brown in the base.
- Butter
- Carries fat-soluble spice flavours and helps browning in the initial glaze.
The step that matters
Browning the base until a brown glaze forms. Browning the meat, ham and vegetables develops deeper savoury flavour through the Maillard reaction. Stirring keeps the glaze from burning, which would make the soup bitter.
Flavor stand-ins for the apple
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, butter, ham, carrot, turnip, onion, celery):
- Lemonbetter flavor fit
- Limeabout as good a flavor fit
- Applethe original
- Avocadoabout as good a flavor fit
Fit is the average pairing score against veal, butter, ham, carrot, turnip, onion, celery. 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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