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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) · 13 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

Prepare 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, sliced onions, mace, cloves, allspice, and black peppercorns.

  4. Simmer until the soup reaches your desired richness.

  5. Remove the meat for serving.

Finish the soup

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

  2. Prepare your choice of vegetables by cutting them small and simmering until tender.

  3. Boil the vermicelli for 15 minutes, then stir in the soy sauce and mushroom ketchup.

  4. Heat the French roll, soak it in the soup until moist, and 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
Provides the meat and bone that give the stock its body and rich flavour.
Sliced onions
Add sweetness and savoury depth to the stock as they cook down.
Vermicelli
Adds starchy body and substance to the finished soup.
Soy sauce
Adds savoury, salty depth that rounds out the broth.
Mushroom ketchup
Contributes concentrated umami and a deeper, darker savoury note.
French roll
Soaks up broth, becoming soft and moist as it absorbs the soup.

The step that matters

Simmer until the soup reaches your desired richness. Slow simmering extracts collagen and flavour from the bone and meat, and the fat rises to the surface where it can be removed once cooled. Stopping too early leaves a thin broth, while overcooking can make the flavour muddy.

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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