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Mullagatawny Soup

A rabbit soup flavored with onions, curry powder, lemon, and optional coconut, served hot with boiled rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Mango and coconut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 221 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Mullagatawny Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Slice and fry the onions gently in butter until amber-colored.

  2. Transfer the onions to a deep stewpot.

  3. In the same pan, brown the floured rabbit or fowl pieces.

  4. Place the browned meat on top of the onions and add 1 quart of boiling stock.

  5. Stew gently for 45 minutes to 1 hour.

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

Make the soup

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

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

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

  4. Stir the mixture into the boiling soup.

  5. Return the meat to the pot.

  6. Simmer for 20 minutes or until tender.

Finish and serve

  1. Add lemon juice just before serving.

  2. 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. Mango + coconuttop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together221 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Rice + coconuttop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,063 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

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

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

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

Rabbit
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through gentle stewing.
Onions
Cooked to amber, they add sweetness and body to the soup base.
Butter
Fat for frying the onions, carrying flavor and aiding browning.
Flour
Dusts the meat for browning and, once browned, thickens the soup.
Curry powder
Supplies the spice aroma and flavor that define the soup.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, spiced broth.

The step that matters

Stirring the curry and browned flour into the boiling soup. Curry powder and flour mixed into liquid can clump if added to a cold or not-yet-boiling pot. Mixing them smooth first and stirring into boiling stock disperses the flour so the soup thickens evenly and the spices cook rather than stay raw.

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, coconut):

  1. Limefits about as well
  2. Avocadofits about as well
  3. Mangothe original
  4. Cherryfits less well

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