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Gravy Soup

A hearty soup made with beef, veal, ham, vegetables, spices, and simmered for six hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Gravy Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Brown the beef and ham in the butter without burning them.

  2. Pour in the boiling water and remove any scum that rises.

  3. Once the scum is gone, add all other ingredients.

  4. Let the soup simmer slowly for 6 hours without stirring.

Finish and strain

  1. Remove from heat and let it settle.

  2. Skim off the fat and strain the soup through a sieve or cloth.

  3. Once cold, remove any remaining fat, leaving the sediment for gravies.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

Shin of beef
Breaks down during long simmering to give the stock body and rich meaty flavour.
Knuckle of veal
Its gelatin dissolves into the liquid, giving the stock a silky, full texture.
Butter
Carries the browning of the beef and ham, adding fat and toasty flavour.
Onions
Soften and sweeten as they cook, adding aromatic depth to the stock.
Carrots
Release natural sweetness and subtle earthy flavour into the long-cooked broth.
Celery
Adds a fresh, savoury aroma that rounds out the stock's base flavour.

The step that matters

Brown the beef and ham in the butter without burning them. Browning builds deep flavour through the Maillard reaction. Burnt fats turn bitter and can taint the whole stock, which a long simmer cannot fix.

Swap the turnip

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, veal, meat, ham, butter, onion, carrot):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Tomatofits about as well
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, veal, meat, ham, butter, onion, carrot. 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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