Name: Gravy Soup
Ingredients: 1 quart Brown Stock; 1 ounce Macaroni; ½ pound Shredded Beef; Salt; Ketchup (optional)

Why it works: Beef and ketchup are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 22% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,067 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Gravy Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Boil the macaroni in salted water until tender.
Cut the cooked macaroni into short lengths or rings.

Make the soup

Place the shredded beef and seasoning in the stock and simmer for 1 hour.
Strain the mixture, remove any scum, and add the macaroni.
Bring to a boil and add ketchup if desired.
Serve hot.

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.

Beef + ketchuptop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,067 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Brown stock: Forms the liquid base that carries the flavour of the whole soup.
Shredded beef: Adds meaty flavour and body as it simmers into the stock.
Macaroni: Adds starchy body and a soft, chewy texture to the soup.

“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.