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Cauliflower Soujf, or Mullagatawny Maigre

A stew of cauliflower, onions, celery, cucumbers, garlic, and French beans simmered in butter and curry powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Cauliflower and cucumber match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 584 recipes. Both carry 2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Cauliflower Soujf, or Mullagatawny Maigre

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup base

  1. Fry the sliced cauliflowers, onions, celery, cucumbers, and garlic in butter.

  2. Transfer the fried vegetables to a stewpan with ½ cup butter and curry powder. Mix well.

  3. Pour in boiling water and stew for 3 hours until pulpy.

  4. Strain the soup.

  5. Return the strained soup to the heat. Add 2 teaspoons of salt. Simmer.

Add the garnish and serve

  1. Fry the additional sliced cauliflowers in butter.

  2. Sprinkle the fried cauliflowers with curry powder.

  3. Add the fried cauliflowers to the soup. Simmer for 2-3 minutes.

  4. Serve hot, optionally with Madeira wine and 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 their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Cauliflower + cucumbertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together584 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Cauliflower + beanstop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together290 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Cucumber + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,556 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Cucumber + beanstop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together602 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cauliflowers
Forms the bulk of the soup and, once stewed to a pulp, gives it body and thickness.
Onions
Softened by frying, they add sweetness and savoury depth to the base.
Celery
Adds aromatic flavour and body as it breaks down during the long stew.
Butter
Carries the frying and adds richness and fat that rounds out the flavour.
Curry powder
Provides the spiced aroma and warm flavour that defines the soup.

The step that matters

Stewing until pulpy. Long, gentle stewing breaks down the fibres of the vegetables so they release their starch and pectin, which thickens the soup. Stopping early leaves it thin and gritty after straining.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cauliflower, onion, celery, cucumber, garlic, beans, butter):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Cuminfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cauliflower, onion, celery, cucumber, garlic, beans, 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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