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Soup

Mullagatawny Soup

A soup made from a mutton neck simmered with spices, salt, pepper, and vegetables.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Mullagatawny Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the neck of mutton into pieces.

  2. Place the mutton in a pot and cover with water.

Make the soup

  1. Add spices, salt, and pepper to taste.

  2. Simmer until the meat is tender.

  3. Add chopped vegetables and cook until soft.

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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + turniptop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,252 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Mutton + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,442 recipes

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

  5. Mutton + carrottop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,878 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton neck
Provides the meat and bone that flavour and enrich the broth as it simmers.
Vegetables
Carrots and turnips soften during cooking, adding sweetness and body to the broth.

The step that matters

Simmering the meat until tender. Tough connective tissue in mutton neck only breaks down into tender meat with long, gentle heat. Boiling hard toughens the meat fibres and clouds the broth, so keep it at a slow simmer.

Swap the turnip

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, pepper, carrot):

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Turnipthe original
  3. Parsnipfits about as well
  4. Spinachfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, pepper, carrot. 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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