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Clear Gravy Soup

A clear soup made from beef bones, vegetables, and seasonings, simmered for hours and strained.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,979 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Clear Gravy Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Remove all fat and marrow from the beef and break up the bones.

  2. Place the meat and bones in a clean saucepan with cold water.

  3. Cover the pan and heat gently until it reaches boiling point, then skim off any scum.

  4. Boil gently for 1 hour, then add the chopped vegetables and seasonings.

  5. Remove scum and boil slowly for 3 hours.

Strain and clarify

  1. Add a piece of raw beef when nearly done, then strain the soup.

  2. When the soup is cold, remove the fat.

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 their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Parsley + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,979 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Carrot + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together687 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Shin of beef
Releases gelatin and meat flavour into the water during long simmering, giving body to the broth.
Onion
Adds sweetness and aromatic depth as it cooks into the broth.
Carrot
Adds subtle sweetness and aroma to the broth.
Celery
Adds savoury, aromatic flavour to the broth.

The step that matters

Skimming scum at the start and during simmering. Scum is coagulated protein and impurities that rise to the surface. Skimming it early keeps the broth clear and clean-tasting, while a hard rolling boil would emulsify fat and cloud it.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, carrot, celery, onion, clove, parsley, marjoram):

  1. Lentilsfits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Chickpeafits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, celery, onion, clove, parsley, marjoram. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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