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Gravy Soup

A hearty soup made with beef shin, onions, bacon, and vegetables simmered in stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Gravy Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. In a large saucepan, layer sliced onions and fat bacon.

  2. Add chopped shin of beef and pour in stock or water.

  3. Cook on medium heat for 1 hour until reduced to a glaze.

Simmer and strain

  1. Add enough cold stock or water to cover the contents.

  2. Stir in sliced carrots, leek, celery (or celery seed), parsley, garlic, marjoram, thyme, bay leaf, white pepper, and salt.

  3. Boil for about 3 hours, then strain the liquid, ensuring it is free from 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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

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

  5. Carrot + leektop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,310 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

Shin of beef
Breaks down into tender meat and releases gelatin and savoury flavour into the broth.
Onions
Sweetness and savoury depth as they caramelise slowly in the fat and pan juices.
Fat bacon
Adds fat and smoky, salty flavour that carries into the soup.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body to the broth as they soften.
Leek
Adds a mild onion-like sweetness and aroma to the broth.

The step that matters

Reducing the onions, bacon and beef to a glaze. Slow cooking until the pan residue browns builds deep flavour through caramelisation and the Maillard reaction. Stopping too early leaves the broth flat, and burning it makes it bitter.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Winter savoryfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, beef, carrot, leek, celery, parsley, garlic. 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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