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Gravy Soup

A hearty beef soup made with gravy stock, vegetables, and a flour roux.

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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the meat into small pieces.

  2. Heat the butter in a stewpan, add the meat and sliced vegetables, and fry until browned.

Simmer the stock

  1. Add the stock, herbs, peppercorns, cloves, and seasoning, and cook gently for 2 to 3 hours.

  2. Strain the mixture and return the liquid to the saucepan.

Thicken and serve

  1. Bring to a boil, mix the flour smoothly with a little cold stock, and pour it into the soup.

  2. Simmer for 5 minutes longer, adjust seasoning to taste, and serve.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef neck or shin
Gives the soup its rich, meaty flavour and body as it simmers.
Butter
Browns the meat and vegetables, adding roasted flavour and richness.
Flour
Thickens the soup when mixed smoothly with cold stock and simmered.
Stock
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavour of the whole soup.
Onion
Adds sweetness and savoury depth as it browns with the meat.

The step that matters

Mixing the flour with cold stock. Flour added directly to hot liquid clumps into lumps that do not dissolve. Mixing it smoothly with a little cold stock first lets the starch disperse evenly before it is poured in and simmered to thicken.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, carrot, turnip, celery, parsley, thyme, clove):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, turnip, celery, parsley, thyme, 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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