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Mulligatawny Soup

A spiced chicken and vegetable soup with curry, mace, and pepper berries, 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; blend thoroughly.

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

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

Finish and serve

  1. Add the reserved chicken back to the soup; season to taste and 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 rich flavor to the base of the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup as it cooks, giving it a smooth, body-rich texture.
Chicken
Provides savory meat flavor; it is removed after cooking and returned to the soup.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and body to the stock, balancing the richness of the butter and flour.
Curry powder
Supplies the warm, spiced aroma that defines this mulligatawny soup.

The step that matters

Cooking the vegetables and chicken in butter until browned. Browning develops deeper flavor through the Maillard reaction. Pale cooking gives a flatter, less savory soup base.

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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