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Another Clear Gravy Soup

A clear soup made from ham, beef, veal, and vegetables simmered for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 ↓

Another Clear Gravy Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. In a large stewpan, layer the ham, beef, and veal.

  2. Break the bones and add them to the meat.

  3. Add onions, turnips, carrots, celery, cloves, and mace.

  4. Cover the pan and heat over a good fire until the meat sticks to the bottom.

  5. When a brown glaze appears, cover the meat with hot water.

  6. As it nears boiling, add ½ pint of cold water and remove the scum.

  7. Continue adding cold water and skimming until no more scum rises.

  8. Boil gently for about 4 hours.

Clarify and finish

  1. Strain the broth through a fine cloth into a stone pan and let it cool.

  2. Once cool, remove the fat and decant the clear broth without disturbing the sediment.

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Lean beef
Browns and releases flavour and gelatine into the broth as it simmers.
Veal
Contributes gelatine from its bones and connective tissue, giving body to the broth.
Ham
Adds savoury, salty depth to the broth as it cooks.
Onions
Add sweetness and aromatic depth to the broth as they cook down.
Carrots
Add gentle sweetness and aroma to the broth.

The step that matters

Skimming the scum. Scum is coagulated protein and impurities that rise as the liquid nears boiling. Removing it as it forms keeps the broth clear; if it is left to stir back in, the soup turns cloudy.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, beef, veal, onion, 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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