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Clear, Pale Gravy Soup or Consommé

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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

Brown the meat

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

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

Make the stock

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

  2. Skim off any scum that rises to the surface, adding cold water as needed.

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

  4. Let the soup 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.

  3. Add salt if needed and a few drops of chili or cayenne vinegar before 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
Releases gelatin and savory flavor into the broth, giving it body as it simmers.
Lean beef
Adds meaty depth of flavor to the broth during long simmering.
Ham
Contributes salty, smoky meat flavor that seasons the broth from within.
Celery
Adds aromatic, savory background flavor to the stock.
Carrots
Add gentle natural sweetness that balances the savory meat flavors.

The step that matters

Skim off the scum as it rises. Skimming keeps the broth clear and clean-tasting, because coagulated proteins and impurities otherwise cloud the soup and can mar its flavor.

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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