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Mulligatawny Soup

A hearty soup made with rabbit or mutton, apple, onion, carrot, turnip, herbs, and curry spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 the meat

  1. Wash and clean the rabbit.

  2. Cut rabbit into small joints.

  3. Cut mutton into small pieces.

Brown and build the base

  1. Melt the dripping in a pot.

  2. When hot, lightly fry the meat.

  3. Remove the meat from the pot.

  4. Fry the onion, apple, curry powder, curry paste, and flour.

Simmer and finish

  1. Add the meat back to the pot along with the stock, water, salt, and herbs.

  2. Bring the soup to a boil.

  3. Skim off any foam.

  4. Add the prepared vegetables and simmer for 2 to 3 hours.

  5. Strain the soup through a fine sieve.

  6. Skim off any fat when the soup is cold.

  7. Reheat the soup.

  8. If using rabbit, add small pieces as garnish.

  9. Serve with boiled rice.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  4. Turnip + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together2,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Rabbit + turniptop 13% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together117 recipes

    Shared aroma: geraniol (rose, geranium).

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

What each ingredient does

Rabbit or mutton
Provides the meat that gives the soup its body and rich flavour.
Flour
Thickens the soup as it cooks with the fat and onion.
Curry powder
Supplies the spiced aroma that defines the soup.
Onion
Adds sweetness and savoury depth as it softens in the fat.
Apple
Adds gentle sweetness and acidity that balances the curry spices.
Dripping
Carries the spices and browns the meat, adding richness.

The step that matters

Frying the curry powder, curry paste and flour. Frying spices and flour in fat for a short time brings out their aroma and cooks off raw floury taste. Burnt spices turn bitter, so keep the heat moderate and stir constantly.

Flavor stand-ins for the apple

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

  1. Limebetter flavor fit
  2. Avocadobetter flavor fit
  3. Lemonbetter flavor fit
  4. Applethe original

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