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Another Receipt for Gravy-soup

A hearty beef soup thickened with a butter‑flour roux and flavored with soy sauce, sherry, and cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,555 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Another Receipt for Gravy-soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Combine beef, onions, carrots, and bouillon in a deep stewpan.

  2. Set over high heat until the broth reduces.

  3. Lower the heat and simmer until it forms a glaze.

  4. Add water to the stewpan and continue cooking.

Brown and stew the beef

  1. Dredge beef in flour.

  2. Season the beef with pepper and salt.

  3. Fry the beef until brown.

  4. Stew the beef for 6 hours with 1 pint of water per pound of meat and the vegetables.

  5. Add 4 fried onions for every 3 quarts of soup.

Finish the soup

  1. Strain the soup.

  2. Remove fat from the soup.

  3. Mix 6 ounces of butter with 5 ounces of flour until smooth.

  4. Add the butter‑flour mixture to the soup.

  5. After 20 minutes, stir in soy sauce, sherry, and a pinch of cayenne before serving.

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. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  3. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  4. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  5. Beef + carrottop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,606 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

Beef
Provides the main meaty flavour and body as it stews into the broth.
Flour
Coats the beef for browning and, mixed with butter, thickens the soup.
Butter
Combined with flour to form a roux that thickens and enriches the soup.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the finished soup.
Soy sauce
Adds savoury, salty depth to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Mixing the butter and flour into the soup. Flour mixed with butter forms a roux that thickens liquid; added directly to hot soup it can clump, so it should be blended smooth first and stirred in gradually.

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, flour, pepper, onion, butter, sauce, sherry):

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Chivefits about as well
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, flour, pepper, onion, butter, sauce, sherry. 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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