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Mulligatawny Soup

A spiced chicken and vegetable soup with flour thickening, served with rice or macaroni.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery 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

  1. Wash, peel, and cut the vegetables and apple into small pieces.

Make the soup

  1. In a pot, cook the vegetables and chicken in butter until browned.

  2. Add flour and seasonings and blend thoroughly.

  3. Pour in the stock and tomatoes and simmer for 1 hour.

  4. Press the mixture through a sieve and reserve the chicken.

  5. Add the reserved chicken back to the soup and season to taste.

Serve

  1. Serve with cooked rice or macaroni.

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 + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together10,172 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Apple + clovetop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together2,615 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Onion + chickentop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together17,808 recipes

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

  5. Carrot + oniontop 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

Butter
Browns the vegetables and chicken, adding fat and rich flavor to the soup base.
Flour
Thickens the stock so the soup becomes body-rich rather than watery.
Raw chicken
Releases savory flavor into the stock while cooking, and is reserved as diced meat.
Onion
Softens and browns during cooking, adding sweetness and savory depth to the base.
Apple
Adds a mild sweetness and fruity tang that balances the curry spices.
Tomatoes
Adds acidity and moisture, rounding out the flavor of the curry spices.

The step that matters

Browning the vegetables and chicken in butter. Browning creates Maillard flavors that deepen the soup's taste. Cooking gently and stopping at golden prevents bitterness from scorching the flour and butter.

Flavor stand-ins for the apple

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

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

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