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Mulligatawny Soup

A spiced mutton soup with vegetables, flour, curry powder, and lemon, served with rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 9,057 recipes mention both. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Mulligatawny Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Remove the fat from the mutton.

  2. Melt the fat in a saucepan.

  3. Add sliced apples and vegetables to the melted fat.

  4. Cook for 15 minutes.

  5. Sprinkle flour and curry powder into the mixture.

  6. Fry for a few minutes.

Simmer the soup

  1. Add mutton in small pieces, salt, herbs, and water.

  2. When the soup boils, remove the scum.

  3. Cover the soup.

  4. Cook gently for 3 hours.

  5. Strain the soup.

  6. Rub the meat through a wire sieve.

  7. Return the strained soup to the saucepan.

Finish and serve

  1. When the soup is boiling, add lemon juice.

  2. Season to taste.

  3. Serve with well-cooked 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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together8,053 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton
Provides rich meat flavour and body as it simmers for hours.
Flour
Thickens the soup by binding with the melted fat before liquid is added.
Curry powder
Adds the spiced, aromatic flavour that defines the soup, bloomed in fat.
Apples
Add natural sweetness that balances the spices and savoury broth.
Onions
Build a sweet, savoury base as they cook down in the melted fat.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the finished soup.

The step that matters

Frying the flour and curry powder. Cooking the flour and curry powder in fat for a few minutes toasts the spices and cooks out raw flour taste. Under-frying leaves the soup dusty and raw-tasting, while burning makes it bitter.

Flavor stand-ins for the apple

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

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

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