Skip to main content
Main

Mulligatawny Soup

A hearty soup of ham, chicken, vegetables, and curry, served with rice and optional cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Chicken and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and 17,808 recipes mention both. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, sweet. The science ↓

Mulligatawny Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean and chop the vegetables.

Make the soup

  1. In a pot, melt the butter and fry the ham, apples, onions, carrot, and celery until softened.

  2. Add the flour, curry paste, curry powder, and stock.

  3. Stir until it boils, then simmer until the vegetables are tender.

  4. Rub the mixture through a sieve.

Serve

  1. Serve with boiled rice and cream on the side, if desired.

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. Chicken + oniontop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together17,808 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  2. Onion + carrottop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together21,599 recipes

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

  3. Ham + chickentop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,497 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Apple + buttertop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together8,692 recipes

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together122,858 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour share little aroma chemistry, yet 122,858 recipes mention both: they likely work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth, body-rich soup as it cooks.
Curry powder
Provides the main spiced, aromatic flavour of the soup.
Butter
Carries the frying of the vegetables and ham and adds rich flavour.
Apples
Add natural sweetness and a mild acidity that balances the curry spices.
Onions
Soften and build a sweet, savoury base for the soup.

The step that matters

Rub the mixture through a sieve. Pressing the cooked solids through a sieve breaks them down so the soup becomes smooth; skipping or rushing this leaves the texture coarse and lumpy.

Flavor stand-ins for the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, sugar, chicken, onion, butter, flour, carrot):

  1. Coconutabout as good a flavor fit
  2. Grapeabout as good a flavor fit
  3. Applethe original
  4. Lemonabout as good a flavor fit

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, sugar, chicken, onion, butter, flour, carrot. 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.

More mulligatawny soup recipes

Clear 6 See all 171 →

You might also like

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipes