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Brown Gravy Soup

A hearty beef soup thickened with cornflour, flavored with herbs, carrots, onions, turnips, and stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Brown Gravy Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the beef into small pieces and remove all fat.

  2. Fry the beef in butter for 5 minutes.

Simmer and thicken

  1. Add stock and chopped vegetables to the pot.

  2. Simmer for 2 hours.

  3. Strain the soup and thicken with cornflour.

  4. Bring to a boil again to thicken.

  5. Optional: Add forcemeat balls 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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Thyme + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Parsley + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 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

Shin of beef
Provides meat flavour and body to the soup as it simmers.
Stock
Forms the liquid base of the soup and carries the flavour of the meat and vegetables.
Cornflour
Thickens the strained soup so it has a smooth, gravy-like body.

The step that matters

Bring to a boil again to thicken. Cornflour only thickens properly once it is heated to a boil, because its starch granules must swell and gelatinise. Boiling too gently can leave the soup thin.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, parsley, thyme, carrot, onion, turnip, butter):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, parsley, thyme, carrot, onion, turnip, butter. 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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