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Mullagatawny Soup

A veal soup with peppercorns, allspice, onions, curry, and a flour batter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Mullagatawny Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. In a stewpan, combine veal trimmings, black peppercorns, allspice, and water. Bring to a boil, skim, and simmer for 1.5 hours. Strain the broth.

Brown and simmer

  1. In a separate pan, fry the veal pieces and onions in butter until browned.

  2. Add the strained broth to the veal and onions, skim, and simmer for 30 minutes.

Thicken and finish

  1. Mix curry powder, flour, salt, and enough cold water to make a batter. Stir this into the soup.

  2. Simmer for an additional 10 minutes before serving.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Allspice + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,302 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Allspice + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,270 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Veal + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,841 recipes

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

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Provides meat flavour and body to the broth as it simmers and browns.
Onions
Soften and brown in butter, adding sweetness and depth to the soup.
Curry powder
Supplies the spiced aroma that defines the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup slightly when stirred in as a batter.

The step that matters

Stirring in the flour batter. Flour mixed with cold water must be fully smooth before it goes into hot soup; added lumpy or dry, it clumps and does not thicken evenly. Simmering afterward cooks out the raw flour taste and lets the starch thicken the broth.

Swap the allspice

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, onion, flour, butter):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, onion, flour, butter. 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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