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Mullagatawny Soup

A rabbit and onion soup flavored with curry powder and served with boiled rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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

Brown the onions and meat

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

  2. Remove the onions and place them in a deep stewpot.

  3. In the same pan, add more butter and lightly brown the meat.

  4. Once browned, place the meat on top of the onions.

Stew and strain

  1. Gradually pour in 1 quart of boiling stock and stew gently for 45 minutes to 1 hour.

  2. Remove the meat and press the stock and onions through a fine sieve.

Finish and serve

  1. Add 2 ½ pints more stock to the mixture in a clean pan and bring to a boil.

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

  3. Return the meat to the pan and simmer for 20 minutes or until tender.

  4. Add the juice of the lemon just before serving.

  5. 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
Cook down to amber, then press through a sieve to thicken and sweeten the soup body.
Rabbit
Supplies the meat, which is browned for flavour and then simmered until tender.
Curry powder
Provides the spice aroma and warm flavour that defines the soup.
Browned flour
Thickens the stock and adds a toasted, nutty depth to the curry.
Stock
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavour and body of the soup.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, spiced soup.

The step that matters

Stirring curry powder into the stock. Curry powder must be mixed smoothly with the flour and a little cold liquid before it goes in, otherwise it clumps and stays raw-tasting. Its aromas are fat-soluble, so blooming it in the butter-based pan gives fuller flavour, and the soup should not be boiled hard afterward to avoid scorching.

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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