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Brown Gravy Soup

A hearty beef and ham soup made with gravy beef, onions, herbs, and vegetables, simmered slowly and strained.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and clove 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 ↓

Brown Gravy Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Heat butter in a close stewpan and fry sliced onions until browned.

  2. Add beef and ham, cover with cold water, and simmer for at least 3 hours without boiling.

  3. When nearing a boil, add cold water to check it and skim off any foam.

  4. After 3 hours, add warm water, black pepper, allspice, salt, sweet herbs, cloves, shallots, carrots, turnips, and celery.

  5. Boil slowly until the meat is tender and falls apart, then strain the soup.

Chill and finish

  1. Let the soup sit overnight, then remove the fat.

  2. Reheat the soup an hour before serving and season with mushroom or walnut 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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Clove + shallottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Allspice + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together386 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

Gravy beef
Breaks down during long simmering to give the broth body and rich meaty flavour.
Onions
Frying until browned adds deep color and sweet, roasted flavour to the broth.
Ham shank
Adds savoury, salty depth and gelatin to the long-simmered stock.
Celery
Contributes aromatic, vegetal flavour that rounds out the broth.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and mild body as they soften in the stock.

The step that matters

Simmer without boiling. A hard boil makes the broth cloudy and emulsifies fat into it, so a slow simmer keeps the stock clear and easier to skim.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, butter, ham, pepper, allspice, clove, shallot):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, butter, ham, pepper, allspice, clove, shallot. 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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