Skip to main content
Main

Clear, Pale Gravy Soup or Consommé

A clear soup made with ham, veal, beef, and vegetables, simmered for hours and served with fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Clear, Pale Gravy Soup or Consommé

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. Rub a deep stewpan or soup pot with butter.

  2. Add the ham, veal, and beef, and cook over medium heat until browned.

  3. Add the bones and pour in the boiling water gradually.

  4. Skim off the scum as it rises, adding cold water to help it surface.

Simmer

  1. Once the scum is gone, add salt, onions, carrots, turnips, celery, herbs, cloves, white pepper, and mace.

  2. Simmer gently for 5.5 to 6.5 hours.

Strain, chill and serve

  1. Strain the soup through a fine cloth in a sieve.

  2. Once cold, remove the fat from the top and leave the sediment.

  3. Reheat the desired amount, adding salt and vinegar or sauce to taste.

  4. Serve with fried bread sippets.

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Its bones and meat release gelatin and flavour, giving the broth body and savoury depth.
Lean beef
Browning and simmering build rich, savoury meaty flavour into the broth.
Ham
Cooked into the stock, it adds salty, smoky depth to the broth.
Carrots
Release natural sweetness and aromatic flavour as they simmer into the stock.
Celery
Adds aromatic, vegetal savour that rounds out the broth's flavour.

The step that matters

Skimming the scum. Scum is coagulated protein and impurities that rise as the liquid heats. Removing it as it forms keeps the broth clear and clean-tasting rather than cloudy and muddy.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, veal, beef, onion, carrot, turnip, celery):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, veal, beef, onion, carrot, turnip, celery. 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.

You might also like

Beef, Mutton, or Veal BrothBeef, Mutton, or Veal Broth6 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipes