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Mullagatawny Soup

A rabbit soup flavored with curry powder, served with boiled rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and mango match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 183 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Mullagatawny Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Slice the onions.

  2. Gently fry the sliced onions in butter until amber-colored.

  3. Remove the onions and set aside.

  4. Add more butter to the pan.

  5. Lightly brown the meat.

  6. Place the browned meat on top of the onions.

  7. Pour in 1 quart of boiling stock.

  8. Stew gently for 45 minutes to 1 hour.

Make the soup

  1. Remove the meat from the pot.

  2. Strain the stock and onions through a fine sieve.

  3. Add 2½ pints of stock to the strained mixture.

  4. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  5. Mix curry powder with browned flour and a little cold water or broth.

  6. Stir the mixture into the boiling soup.

  7. Return the meat to the pot.

  8. Simmer for 20 minutes or until tender.

  9. Add lemon juice just before serving.

Serve

  1. Serve hot with boiled rice.

  2. Optionally, add pickled mango strips to the soup for extra flavor.

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. Rice + mangotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together183 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + mangotop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together302 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Lemon + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Rabbit + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together252 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Slowly fried to amber, they build the sweet, deep flavor base of the soup.
Butter
Carries the frying of the onions and meat, adding richness and browning.
Rabbit
Supplies the meat that is browned and then stewed until tender in the stock.
Flour
Browned and mixed with curry powder, it thickens the soup and body the broth.
Stock
Forms the liquid base of the soup, carrying the flavor of the meat and onions.
Curry powder
Provides the spiced aroma that defines the flavor of this soup.

The step that matters

Browning the flour with the curry powder. Flour that is not browned tastes raw and pasty, and stirring it in without enough cold liquid first forms lumps. Mixing it smooth with a little cold liquid before adding it to the boiling soup keeps the thickening even.

Swap the mango

The recipe marks mango as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, butter, rabbit, flour, lemon, rice):

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Avocadofits about as well
  3. Limefits about as well
  4. Mangothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, rabbit, flour, lemon, rice. 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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