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Gravy Soup

A hearty beef soup with herbs, spices, and vermicelli, served with a hot French roll.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 19 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. Break the bone of the leg of beef and place it in a saucepan with 1 gallon of water.

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

  3. Stew until the soup reaches your desired richness, then remove the meat.

  4. Once the meat is cold, remove the fat from the soup.

Finish the soup

  1. Heat the soup and add vermicelli and the boiled celery pieces.

  2. Season with cayenne and salt to taste.

  3. Optionally, add carrot, turnip, spinach, and endive.

  4. Stir in soy sauce and mushroom ketchup.

  5. Serve with a hot French roll in the soup.

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. Celery + carrottop 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. Celery + turniptop 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

Beef leg
Releases flavour, collagen and body into the broth as it stews.
Onions
Fried to a brown, they add sweetness and deep savoury colour to the broth.
Vermicelli
Adds soft starchy strands that absorb broth and give the soup body.
Celery
Adds a mild vegetal aroma and savoury background flavour.
Soy sauce
Adds salty, savoury depth and umami to the broth.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds concentrated savoury umami and a rich, dark note.

The step that matters

Stew until the soup reaches your desired richness. Stewing extracts collagen and flavour from the bone and meat. Too short a stew gives a thin broth, while overcooking can make the flavour muddy. Taste as it cooks.

“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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