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Mullagatawny Soup

A curry-flavored rabbit soup with onions, stock, lemon, and optional pickled mango, served hot over boiled rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and mango match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 183 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Mullagatawny Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Slice and fry the onions gently in butter until amber-colored.

  2. Remove the onions and place them in a deep stewpot.

  3. Add more butter to the pan and lightly brown the meat.

  4. Once browned, place the meat on top of the onions.

  5. Pour in 1 quart of boiling stock and stew gently for 45 minutes to 1 hour.

  6. Remove the meat and strain the stock and onions through a fine sieve.

Make the curry soup

  1. Add 2 ½ pints of stock to the strained mixture and bring to a boil.

  2. Mix 2 tablespoons of curry powder with an equal amount of browned flour and a little cold water or broth, then stir into the boiling stock.

  3. Return the meat to the pot and simmer for 20 minutes or until tender.

  4. Add the juice of a small lemon just before serving.

Serve

  1. Serve hot with boiled rice and optionally add pickled mango strips.

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. Rice + mangotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together183 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Lemon + mangotop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together302 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Lemon + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Rabbit + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together252 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Break down slowly into amber sweetness and body that thickens and flavors the stock.
Rabbit
Supplies the meat that is browned for flavor and then simmered until tender.
Browned flour
Thickens the stock and adds a toasted, nutty flavor to the curry.
Curry powder
Provides the spiced aroma and flavor that defines the soup.
Butter
Carries the frying of onions and browning of meat, adding richness and browning.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, spiced soup.

The step that matters

Mixing the curry powder and browned flour into the boiling stock. Curry powder mixed with flour and cold liquid first disperses evenly, so it does not clump. Stirring it into already boiling stock lets the flour starch thicken the soup smoothly without lumps.

Swap the mango

The recipe marks mango as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, butter, rabbit, flour, lemon, rice):

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Avocadofits about as well
  3. Limefits about as well
  4. Mangothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, rabbit, flour, lemon, rice. 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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