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Gravy Soup

A hearty beef soup made with a leg of beef, herbs, spices, and vermicelli.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 19 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Gravy Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Wash and soak the leg of beef, then break the bone.

  2. Place the beef in a saucepan with 1 gallon of water, sweet herbs, sliced onions, mace, cloves, allspice, and black pepper.

  3. Stew until the soup reaches your desired richness, then remove the meat.

  4. Once the meat is cold, remove the fat.

Finish the soup

  1. Heat the soup and add vermicelli, boiled celery, cayenne, and salt.

  2. Optionally, add carrot, turnip, spinach, and endive.

  3. Stir in soy sauce and mushroom ketchup.

  4. Serve with a hot French roll placed in the soup.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Clove + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 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

Leg of beef
Provides the meat and bone that give the soup its body and rich flavour.
Sliced onions
Add sweetness and aromatic depth as they cook down into the broth.
Vermicelli
Adds starch and bulk, giving the soup a light, substantial texture.
Soy sauce
Adds savoury, salty depth and browning colour to the broth.
Mushroom ketchup
Contributes concentrated savoury umami flavour to the broth.

The step that matters

Stew until the soup reaches your desired richness. Long, gentle simmering slowly extracts collagen and flavour from the bone and meat. Boiling hard can cloud the broth and make it greasy, so keep it at a gentle simmer.

“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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