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Soup Sante or Gravy Soup

A veal stock-based soup with anchovies, spices, and egg or force‑meat balls, finished with butter, flour, and wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Soup Sante or Gravy Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. In a pot, combine veal stock, tongue, skin, onions, cloves, mace, nutmeg, sweet herbs, and anchovies.

  2. Stew until tender, then remove the meat and cut it into 2-inch pieces.

  3. Strain the liquid and melt butter in a stewpan.

Make the soup

  1. Stir in flour until smooth, then gradually add the strained liquid.

  2. If lumpy, strain again through a sieve.

  3. Add white wine, season well, and include force-meat and egg-balls.

  4. Stir in lemon juice and let it stew gently for an hour.

  5. If too thick, add some broth before the final simmer.

  6. Serve hot 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 + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the base and carries flavour into the roux.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth, body-giving gravy.
Onions
Add savoury sweetness and depth to the stock as it stews.
White wine
Adds acidity and a bright aroma to the finished soup.
Anchovies
Contribute savoury depth that rounds out the stock.

The step that matters

Strain the liquid and make the roux smooth. Flour stirred into hot butter must be mixed in fully, then the liquid added gradually, or lumps form that cannot easily be whisked out. Straining again through a sieve catches any that remain, giving a smooth, even gravy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clove, mace, nutmeg, butter, flour, white wine, meat):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, mace, nutmeg, butter, flour, white wine, meat. 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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