Name: Mulligatawny Soup
Ingredients: 1 shin of beef; 4 large onions; Best part of a fowl or rabbit; Flour (for dredging); 1 oz. coriander seed; 5 oz. tamarind; ½ oz. ground ginger; 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper (adjust to taste); Butter (for frying)

Why it works: Coriander and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 3,505 recipes mention both. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Mulligatawny Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make a good stock from the shin of beef.
Slice and fry the onions in butter until light brown.
Dredge the onions with flour and add the curry powder.
Warm the mixture slightly, then add the stock.
Boil everything together briefly, then strain through a fine sieve.
Add the fowl or rabbit cut into pieces.
If the soup is not thick enough, add a little more flour.

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.

Coriander + gingertop 1% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together3,505 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
Coriander + tamarindtop 3% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together271 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).
Tamarind + gingertop 3% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together325 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Coriander + peppertop 6% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together5,949 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together17,092 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

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, rabbit, flour, coriander, tamarind, ginger, pepper):

Capsicumbetter flavor fit
Carrotbetter flavor fit
Shallotbetter flavor fit
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, rabbit, flour, coriander, tamarind, ginger, pepper. 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).