Skip to main content
Main

Mulligatawny Soup

A hearty soup of onion, turnip, ham, stock, flour, tomatoes, chicken, rice, and curry powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Chicken and rice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and 4,569 recipes mention both. Both carry (e,e)-2,4-decadienal, which smells fatty, deep fried. The science ↓

Mulligatawny Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup base

  1. In a saucepan, brown the chopped onion and turnip in butter with the chopped ham.

  2. Pour in the hot stock and stir in the flour.

  3. Add the canned tomatoes and boil for two hours.

  4. Press the mixture through a sieve.

Finish the soup

  1. Stir in the diced chicken, boiled rice, curry powder, and season with salt and pepper.

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. Chicken + ricetop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together4,569 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  2. Tomato + ricetop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together2,990 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + chickentop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together6,027 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

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

  5. Onion + tomatotop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together20,622 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 onion, turnip and ham, adding richness and savoury flavour.
Flour
Thickens the stock so the soup has body.
Canned tomatoes
Add acidity, colour and body as they cook down for two hours.
Curry powder
Adds the spiced aroma that defines the soup.
Cooked chicken
Adds protein and substance to the finished soup.
Boiled rice
Adds bulk and a soft texture to the soup.

The step that matters

Pressing the mixture through a sieve. Pushing the cooked vegetables, ham and tomatoes through a sieve breaks them down and gives the soup a smooth, thickened texture. Skipping or rushing this leaves the soup lumpy and coarse.

Flavor stand-ins for the turnip

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, butter, ham, flour, tomato, chicken, rice):

  1. Potatobetter flavor fit
  2. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  3. Asparagusbetter flavor fit
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, ham, flour, tomato, chicken, rice. 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.

More mulligatawny soup recipes

Clear 6 See all 171 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesChicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipes