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Clear Gravy Soup

A clear soup made with ham, beef, veal, and vegetables, simmered for hours and strained.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Clear Gravy Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the meat

  1. Butter the inside of a tin stew pot.

  2. Layer the ham, beef, and veal at the bottom.

  3. Cover the pot and heat over high heat until the meat sticks.

  4. Turn the meat and brown it nicely.

Simmer and skim

  1. Cover the meat with cold water.

  2. When it begins to boil, add ½ pint of cold water to raise the scum.

  3. Skim the scum off without stirring the soup.

  4. Repeat adding ½ pint of cold water and skimming until no more scum rises.

  5. Prepare the vegetables: peel and slice the onions, turnips, and carrots, and cut the celery.

  6. Add the vegetables to the soup.

  7. Move the pot to a cooler part of the fire and let it simmer gently for 4 hours.

Strain

  1. Strain the soup through a fine towel or linen bag into a large bowl without squeezing the bag.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lean fresh beef
Provides the main meaty flavor and body of the broth as it cooks slowly.
Ham
Adds savory, smoky depth to the broth.
White onions
Contribute sweetness and aroma as they simmer into the soup.
Celery
Adds aromatic, savory flavor to the broth.

The step that matters

Skimming the scum. Scum is coagulated protein and impurities that rise as the liquid heats. Skimming it without stirring keeps the broth clear and clean-tasting, while stirring would break it up and cloud the soup.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Onionthe original
  4. Okrafits about as well

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