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Clear, Pale Gravy Soup or Consommé

A clear, pale soup made from ham, veal, beef, and vegetables, simmered for several hours and strained.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Clear, Pale Gravy Soup or Consommé

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Grease a deep stewpan or soup pot with butter.

  2. Add the ham, veal, and beef, and cook over medium heat until browned.

Make the broth

  1. Add the bones and gradually pour in the boiling water.

  2. Skim off any scum that rises, adding cold water to help it surface.

  3. Once the scum stops appearing, add salt, onions, carrots, turnips, celery, herbs, cloves, white pepper, and mace.

  4. Simmer gently for 5.5 to 6.5 hours.

Strain and serve

  1. Strain the soup through a fine cloth in a sieve.

  2. Once cooled, remove any fat from the top and heat the desired amount for serving.

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Connective tissue breaks down into gelatin during long simmering, giving the broth body and mouthfeel.
Beef
Browned and simmered for a deep, savory meat flavor and added body in the stock.
Ham
Contributes salty, smoky, savory depth to the broth.
Onions
Release sweetness and aromatic flavor as they cook slowly in the liquid.
Carrots
Add gentle sweetness and aroma to the broth.

The step that matters

Simmer gently. Boiling churns the liquid and breaks up fat and fine proteins, which cloud the broth. A slow simmer lets impurities rise to be skimmed and keeps the soup clear.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, veal, beef, onion, carrot, turnip, celery):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, veal, beef, onion, 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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