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Clear Gravy Soup

A clear soup made with ham, beef, veal, onions, turnips, carrots, celery, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 stew pot.

  2. Layer the ham, beef, and veal in the pot.

  3. Cover the pot and heat over high heat.

  4. When the meat begins to stick, turn it until browned.

  5. Cover the meat with cold water.

  6. When it starts to boil, add 2 cups of water, one pint at a time, skimming off the scum each time.

Simmer and strain

  1. Prepare the vegetables while skimming the soup.

  2. Add the vegetables to the pot and move it to a cooler part of the fire.

  3. Let it simmer gently for 4 hours.

  4. Strain the soup through a fine cloth into a large bowl without squeezing the cloth.

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
Builds the meaty, savoury flavour of the broth as it browns and simmers.
Veal
Adds body and gelatin from the bones, giving the broth a fuller mouthfeel.
Ham
Contributes salty, smoky depth to the broth.
White onions
Release sweetness and aromatic flavour into the long-simmered broth.
Celery
Adds a fresh, aromatic vegetal note to the broth.

The step that matters

Skimming the scum after the water boils. Scum is coagulated protein and impurities that rise as the liquid heats. Removing it as it forms keeps the broth clear and clean-tasting, which is the goal of this 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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