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Gravy Soup

A beef soup with gravy, vegetables, vermicelli, and a French roll.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 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 crack the bone.

  2. Place the beef in a pot with water, sweet herbs, fried onions, mace, cloves, allspice, and black pepper.

Make the soup

  1. Stew until the soup reaches your desired richness.

  2. Remove the meat; it can be served with some gravy.

  3. The next day, remove the fat from the soup for basting or pie crust.

  4. Prepare your choice of vegetables and simmer until tender.

  5. Boil the vermicelli for 15 minutes.

  6. Add soy sauce and mushroom ketchup to the vermicelli.

Serve

  1. Heat the French roll, then place it in the soup until moist and serve 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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Leg of beef
Provides rich meaty flavor and body as it stews into the broth.
Onions
Fried until golden brown, they add sweetness and deep savory color to the soup.
Vermicelli
Thin pasta that adds starchy body and soaks up the seasoned broth.
French roll
Bread that soaks up broth as it heats, becoming soft and moist.
Soy sauce
Adds salty, savory depth and darkens the soup.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds concentrated savory, umami flavor to the soup.

The step that matters

Remove the fat from the soup. Fat rises and solidifies as the soup cools, so chilling it overnight lets it be lifted off cleanly. Leaving it in makes the soup greasy and heavy on the palate.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, onion, clove, allspice, carrot, turnip, celery):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Winter savoryfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, onion, clove, allspice, carrot, turnip, 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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