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Cheap, Clear Gravy Soup

A clear beef broth made by simmering shin or leg of beef with spices and aromatics for several 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 ↓

Cheap, Clear Gravy Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Ask the butcher to cut 5-6 pounds of shin or leg of beef into even pieces.

  2. Place the beef in a pot with 3 quarts of cold water and bring to a slow boil.

  3. Skim the surface, then add salt, peppercorns, cloves, mace, savory herbs, carrots, celery, and onion if using.

Simmer

  1. Simmer gently for 4 hours until the beef is tender, then remove it from the pot.

  2. Continue simmering the soup for an additional 2-3 hours.

Strain and season

  1. Strain the soup through a fine sieve into a clean pan.

  2. Once cooled, remove any fat from the surface.

  3. Heat the strained soup, then stir in sugar, soy sauce, and Harvey's sauce or mushroom ketchup.

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

  4. Clove + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  5. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef shin or leg
Collagen from the connective tissue breaks down into gelatin, giving body to the broth.
Cold water
Extracts flavour and gelatin from the beef as it heats slowly.
Carrots
Add sweetness and aroma to the broth as they simmer.
Celery root
Adds savoury, aromatic depth to the broth during simmering.
Soy sauce
Adds savoury depth and colour to the finished broth.

The step that matters

Skim the surface and keep the simmer gentle. Bringing the pot to a hard boil emulsifies fat and proteins into the liquid, making the broth cloudy. Gentle heat and skimming keep it clear.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, clove, mace, carrot, celery, sugar, sauce):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, clove, mace, carrot, celery, sugar, sauce. 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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