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Mullagatawny Soup

A Jamaican rabbit soup flavored with curry, onions, and optional mango or cocoa‑nut.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 and fry the onions gently in butter until amber-colored, then transfer to a deep stewpot.

  2. In the same pan, add more butter and lightly brown the meat, then place it on top of the onions.

  3. Pour in 1 quart of boiling stock and stew gently for 45 minutes to 1 hour.

Strain and thicken

  1. Remove the meat and strain the stock and onions through a fine sieve.

  2. Add 2½ pints of stock to the strained mixture and bring to a boil.

  3. Stir in the curry powder mixed with browned flour and a little cold water or broth.

Finish and serve

  1. Return the meat to the pot and simmer for 20 minutes or until tender.

  2. Add the lemon juice just before serving and serve hot with 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. 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
Cooked slowly until amber, they build the sweet, deep base of the soup.
Rabbit or fowl
Supplies the meat that stews until tender and flavours the stock.
Stock
Forms the liquid body of the soup and carries the flavour of the other ingredients.
Curry powder
Provides the spice flavour that defines the soup.
Browned flour
Thickens the soup and adds a toasted, nutty depth.
Butter
Carries the flavour of the onions and meat and helps them brown.

The step that matters

Stirring the curry powder into the flour and liquid. Curry powder mixed with flour and a little cold liquid before it goes into the hot soup stays smooth. Added dry or too hot, it clumps and the spices can scorch in the fat, leaving a gritty, bitter result.

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, cocoa):

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Mangothe original
  4. Orangefits about as well

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