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Mulligatawny Soup

A soup made with tinned mutton, calf's head, onions, carrots, turnips, apples, curry powder, flour, and dried herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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

  1. Open the tin of mutton and remove the fat.

  2. Place the mutton in a basin with 3 pints of hot water.

  3. Prepare the apples and vegetables.

  4. Add them to a saucepan with the clarified fat.

Make the soup

  1. Fry the mixture for about 12 minutes, adding a little water from the soaking meat, stirring occasionally.

  2. Boil for 20 minutes.

  3. Mix the curry powder and flour with a little of the liquid and add this mixture to the saucepan.

  4. Add the soaked meat and its water.

  5. Return to the heat and boil for 2 hours, skimming as necessary.

  6. Strain the soup through a sieve.

  7. Add the calf's head cut into small pieces.

  8. Re-warm the soup.

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. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together14,555 recipes

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

  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

Flour
Thickens the soup as it mixes with the curry powder and liquid.
Onions
Soften and sweeten during frying, building the base flavour of the soup.
Apples
Add mild sweetness and acidity that balances the curry spice.
Tinned mutton
Provides meat flavour and richness to the broth as it simmers.

The step that matters

Frying the vegetables with the curry powder and flour. Frying the mixture gently in fat lets the spices bloom and the onions brown lightly, deepening flavour. Adding the flour and curry powder as a paste with a little liquid prevents lumps and a raw, floury taste in the finished soup.

Flavor stand-ins for the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, onion, carrot, turnip, pepper, 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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