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Mulligatawny Soup

A spiced soup made with fowl or rabbit, onions, apples, curry powder, and cream, served over boiled rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and 41,494 recipes mention both. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Mulligatawny Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mince the onions finely and fry them brown in a little butter.

  2. Cut the fowl or rabbit into joints and slightly brown them in the frying pan.

Simmer the soup

  1. Place the browned meat in the stock with the onions and apples, and simmer until the meat is tender.

  2. Remove the meat from the stock.

  3. Mix the curry powder and flour into a smooth paste with a little cold water, then add some stock and stir well into the soup.

  4. Let it boil for 5 minutes, then adjust seasoning if necessary and add the cut-up meat.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in the cream if using, and serve with 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. Butter + creamtop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together41,494 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Clove + appletop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together2,615 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Rabbit + ricetop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together252 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Onion + ricetop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together9,990 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Rabbit + creamtop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together409 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Fowl or rabbit
Provides the meat, which becomes tender through long simmering in the stock.
Onions
Break down during frying and simmering, adding sweetness and body to the soup.
Apples
Add mild sweetness and acidity that balance the curry spices.
Curry powder
Supplies the spiced aroma and flavour that defines the soup.
Flour
Thickens the stock, giving the soup a smoother, fuller body.
Brown stock
Forms the liquid base, carrying flavour and moisture throughout the soup.

The step that matters

Mixing the curry paste into the stock. Curry powder and flour must be blended into a smooth paste with cold water before adding stock, because dumping them in dry causes lumps and uneven thickening.

Flavor stand-ins for the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, onion, apple, flour, butter, cream, rice):

  1. Celerybetter flavor fit
  2. Cinnamonbetter flavor fit
  3. Nutmegbetter flavor fit
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, onion, apple, flour, butter, cream, 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.

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