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Mulligatawny Soup

A hearty soup of rabbit or mutton with vegetables, curry, and fruit, simmered in stock and finished with lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 and vegetables

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

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

  3. Heat the stock. Add the meat, onion, carrot, turnip, and herbs. Simmer for 1 hour.

Make the soup

  1. Mix the curry powder and flour with a little cold water. Stir the mixture into the soup.

  2. Add the minced fruit. Simmer for another hour.

  3. Remove the meat. Cut the best parts into small pieces. Rub the remainder through a sieve with the vegetables, using the soup to help.

Finish and serve

  1. Add salt and lemon juice. Reheat the soup.

  2. Return the meat pieces to the soup. 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. Turnip + flourtop 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

Rabbit or mutton
Provides the main meat flavour and body of the soup as it simmers.
Bone stock
Forms the liquid base and carries the flavour of the bones into the soup.
Butter
Fat for browning the meat and onion, adding richness and flavour.
Flour
Thickens the soup slightly when stirred in with the curry powder.
Curry powder
Adds the spiced, aromatic character that defines the soup.
Rhubarb or sour apple
Adds tartness that balances the richness and spices of the soup.

The step that matters

Stirring the curry and flour mixture into the soup. Flour mixed into hot liquid without first being blended smooth will clump into lumps. Mixing it with cold water first lets the starch disperse evenly, so it thickens the soup smoothly.

Flavor stand-ins for the lemon

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