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Gravy Soup

A hearty soup made with lean beef, ham, vegetables, herbs, and seasoned with pepper, salt, celery essence, and walnut catsup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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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 ↓

Gravy Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the meat into strips and slice the vegetables.

  2. Fry the onions in dripping until brown.

Make the soup

  1. Combine all ingredients in a soup kettle with 1 quart of cold water and bring slowly to a boil.

  2. Add 1 quart of hot water and cook for an additional hour on low heat.

  3. Pour in the remaining cold water and boil steadily for 3 hours after it starts bubbling.

  4. Strain the soup, pulping the vegetables through a colander, then strain again through a fine sieve.

  5. Season the soup and set aside a portion for Sunday, seasoning the meat rags highly and returning them to the soup.

Finish and serve

  1. Reheat today's soup, boil and skim, then add 1 tablespoon of walnut catsup and serve over well-buttered toast in a tureen.

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. Tomato + cucumbertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,405 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 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

Lean beef
Provides the main meat flavour and body as it simmers for hours into the broth.
Onions
Frying until brown adds deep, sweet, savoury colour and flavour to the soup.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and body, and pulp thickens the soup once strained.
Ham
Adds salty, smoky meat flavour to the broth during long simmering.

The step that matters

Boiling steadily for 3 hours after bubbling starts. Long, steady simmering extracts flavour and gelatin from the beef and bones, but a rolling boil can cloud the broth and toughen the meat. Keep it at a gentle, steady simmer.

Swap the cucumber

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

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, ham, carrot, turnip, tomato, pepper, 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.

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