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Gravy Soup

A hearty beef soup with herbs, spices, vegetables, vermicelli, soy sauce, mushroom ketchup, 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

Make the stock

  1. Wash and soak the leg of beef.

  2. Break the bone and place it in a pot with 1 gallon of water.

  3. Add the sweet herbs, fried onions, mace, cloves, allspice, and black peppercorns.

  4. Stew until the soup reaches your desired richness.

  5. Remove the meat for serving.

  6. The next day, remove the layer of fat for basting or pie crust.

Add the vegetables and noodles

  1. Prepare your choice of vegetables.

  2. Simmer the carrots, turnips, and celery until tender.

  3. Boil the vermicelli for 15 minutes.

  4. Stir in the soy sauce and mushroom ketchup.

Serve

  1. Heat the French roll.

  2. Place it in the soup until moist.

  3. 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
Gives the stock its meaty flavor and body as it stews.
Sweet herbs
Add aromatic flavor to the stock during the long stew.
Onions
Add sweetness and depth when sliced and fried before stewing.
Soy sauce
Adds savory, salty depth to the finished soup.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds savory umami flavor and richness to the soup.
French roll
Soaks up broth, becoming moist and tender to thicken the soup.

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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