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Mulligatawny Soup

A hearty soup of chicken, vegetables, and curry, finished with a roux and served with rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 10,172 recipes mention both. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Mulligatawny Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. Slice the vegetables and place them in a saucepan with half the butter and herbs.

  2. Fry for 10 minutes.

  3. Add the chicken and stock.

  4. Bring to a boil and skim well.

  5. Simmer for 1 hour.

  6. Remove the chicken and take the meat off the bones.

  7. Return the bones to the saucepan.

  8. Simmer for another hour.

  9. Pass the mixture through a fine sieve.

Make the curry roux

  1. In another pan, melt the remaining butter.

  2. Add the curry powder and fry for 2-3 minutes.

  3. Add the flour and stir until smooth.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the soup and the best pieces of chicken.

  2. Boil for 10 minutes.

  3. Season to taste.

  4. Serve with boiled Patna 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. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together10,172 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Mace + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together8,199 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Carrot + clovetop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together4,916 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Gives the soup its meaty body and flavour as it simmers into the stock.
Butter
Carries the frying of the vegetables and spices and adds richness to the soup.
Flour
Thickens the curry butter into a roux that gives the soup body.
Curry powder
Provides the main spiced, aromatic flavour of the soup after frying in butter.
Onion
Softens and sweetens during frying, building the savoury base of the stock.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour into the curry butter until smooth. Flour added to hot fat must be stirred constantly so the starch disperses evenly; otherwise lumps form and the soup thickens unevenly.

Flavor stand-ins for the mace

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

  1. Gingerbetter flavor fit
  2. Parsleybetter flavor fit
  3. Thymebetter flavor fit
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, celery, butter, flour, onion, carrot, clove. 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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