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Gravy Soup

A hearty beef broth made with herbs, spices, vegetables, and vermicelli, served with a French roll.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 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

Make the broth

  1. Soak and ash a leg of beef, break the bone, and place it in a pot with 1 gallon of water.

  2. Add sweet herbs, sliced onions, mace, cloves, allspice, and black peppercorns.

  3. Stew until the soup reaches your desired richness.

  4. Remove the meat.

  5. Save the meat for serving with a little gravy.

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

Add the vegetables and seasonings

  1. Prepare vegetables like carrots, turnips, and celery.

  2. Simmer the vegetables until tender.

  3. Boil vermicelli for 15 minutes.

  4. Stir in soy sauce and mushroom ketchup.

Serve

  1. Heat a French roll.

  2. Moisten the roll in the soup.

  3. Serve in the 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 bones that build the rich, savory body of the broth.
Sweet onions
Release sugars and savory flavor as they stew, adding depth and sweetness to the broth.
Soy sauce
Adds salty, savory depth and helps deepen the broth's color.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds concentrated umami and savory depth to the broth.
French roll
Soaks up the broth, becoming soft and savory when moistened in the soup.

The step that matters

Remove the fat the next day. Fat that has cooled and solidified on the surface is easy to lift off in one layer. Skipping this leaves a greasy soup, so chill it overnight before skimming.

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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