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Broths, Gravies, and Soups

A beef broth made with gravy beef, cow heel, thickening, browning, mushroom ketchup, wine, lemon, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Broths, Gravies, and Soups

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. In a stewpan, add boiling water and simmer gently for 2 hours.

  2. Cut the meat into mouthful pieces and add to the soup.

  3. Cut the cow heel into 1-inch pieces and add to the soup.

Thicken and season

  1. In a separate stewpan, mix thickening with a ladleful of gravy until well combined.

  2. Pour the mixture back into the stewpan and simmer for another 30 minutes.

  3. Strain the soup through a fine sieve into a larger stewpan.

  4. Squeeze the juice of the lemon into the soup.

  5. Add browning, mushroom ketchup, salt, pepper, nutmeg, and wine.

  6. Simmer all ingredients together for about 30 minutes.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Beef + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. Mushroom + sherrytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,176 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-methylphenol (smoky, clove).

  4. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 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

Gravy beef
Breaks down during long simmering to give the broth its meaty body and flavour.
Cow heel
Releases gelatin into the broth during long simmering, giving body and a rich mouthfeel.
Thickening (no. 47)
Starch that swells when heated, thickening the broth to a richer consistency.
Madeira or sherry wine
Adds acidity and aromatic depth that brightens the savoury broth.

The step that matters

Thickening the broth. Starch must be mixed smoothly with a little cold or warm liquid before being returned to the pot, otherwise it clumps. Simmering then lets the starch swell and thicken the soup evenly.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, mushroom, ketchup, pepper, nutmeg, sherry):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Limefits about as well
  3. Orangefits less well
  4. Grapefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, mushroom, ketchup, pepper, nutmeg, sherry. 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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