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Mulligatawny Soup

A spiced soup of veal, ham, carrots, turnip, onions, apples, and curry, thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and 8,001 recipes mention both. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Mulligatawny Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. In a stewpan, combine veal, butter, ham, carrot, turnip, onions, apples, and ½ pint of water.

  2. Cook over medium heat, stirring frequently, until the bottom is glazed.

Simmer and strain

  1. Add curry powder, curry paste, and flour; stir well.

  2. Pour in 4-5 pints of water, salt, and sugar; bring to a boil.

  3. Reduce heat and simmer for 2.5 hours, skimming off fat.

  4. Strain the soup through a fine sieve into a tureen.

  5. Return some veal pieces to the stewpan to boil, then add to the soup.

Serve

  1. Serve with plain boiled rice on a separate dish.

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. Carrot + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together8,001 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + oniontop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together21,599 recipes

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

  3. Turnip + oniontop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together7,584 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together2,859 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + appletop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together8,692 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

Veal knuckle
Releases gelatin and savoury flavour into the broth as it simmers for a long time.
Butter
Fat that carries the curry spices and helps the vegetables brown in the pan.
Onions
Sweetness and body once softened and browned, forming the soup's aromatic base.
Apples
Add natural sweetness and a mellow acidity that balances the heat of the curry.
Curry powder
Provides the main spice aroma and flavour of the soup.
Flour
Cooked with the curry and fat, it thickens the soup slightly.

The step that matters

Cook the base until the bottom is glazed. Browning the vegetables and meat sugars in the butter builds deep flavour. Stirring frequently prevents scorching, since burnt bits would taste bitter in the finished soup.

Flavor stand-ins for the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, butter, ham, carrot, turnip, onion, flour. 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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