Skip to main content
Main

Gravy or Soup Meats

A broth made by simmering a ham with water, onions, garlic, shallots, herbs, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Gravy or Soup Meats

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ham

  1. Soak, scrape, and clean the ham thoroughly.

  2. Place the ham in a pot that closely fits its size.

Simmer

  1. Cover the ham with water and add onions, garlic, shallots, bay leaf, herbs, cloves, peppercorns, and allspice.

  2. Cover the pot and simmer for about 3 hours.

Serve and save the broth

  1. Remove the rind from the ham and serve with breadcrumbs or glaze.

  2. Strain the cooking liquid and save it.

  3. When boiling poultry or meat, add the saved liquid and boil down until reduced to about 3 pints.

  4. Let it cool; it will turn into a flavorful jelly, perfect for sauces.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Thyme + basiltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  3. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  4. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Shallot + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,476 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Ham
Provides the meat and the savory flavor that gives the broth its body.
Onions
Add sweetness and aromatic depth to the cooking liquid as they soften.
Garlic
Adds pungent aroma that mellows during the long simmer.
Shallots
Contribute a mild, sweet oniony flavor to the broth.

The step that matters

Boil down the saved liquid to about 3 pints. The broth must be reduced until it is concentrated enough to set into a jelly once cooled. Under-reducing leaves it too thin to gel and too weak in flavor for sauces.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, clove, garlic, shallot, parsley, thyme, basil):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Eggplantfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, clove, garlic, shallot, parsley, thyme, basil. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes