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Soup

Veal-gravy Soup

A soup made with veal, ham, onions, carrots, parsnips, celery, cloves, and light broth, simmered until the meat browns.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,097 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Veal-gravy Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Garnish the bottom of a stew pan with lard.

  2. Layer with ham, veal, onions, carrots, parsnips, celery, and cloves.

Brown and simmer

  1. Sauté on low heat until the veal releases its juices.

  2. Increase heat until the meat browns and sticks to the pan.

  3. Add enough light broth and herbs, then simmer until done.

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 + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,097 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Parsnip + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together561 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Parsnip + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together306 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal cutlet
Provides the main meat, which releases juices and browns to build flavor in the broth.
Ham
Adds savory, salty flavor that deepens the broth as it cooks.
Onions
Soften and sweeten as they cook, adding aromatic depth to the soup base.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body to the broth as they simmer.
Parsnips
Add earthy sweetness and body to the broth as they simmer.
Celery
Adds aromatic, savory depth to the broth base.

The step that matters

Increase heat until the meat browns and sticks to the pan. Browning the meat and vegetables creates flavorful compounds through the Maillard reaction. Stop before the fond scorches, and deglaze it into the broth so the flavor is not lost.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, veal, carrot, parsnip, celery, clove):

  1. Turnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, veal, carrot, parsnip, celery, clove. 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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