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Gravy Soup

A hearty soup made with beef, vegetables, and a roux thickened with flour.

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

Gravy Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the meat into small pieces.

Make the soup

  1. Heat the butter in a stewpan, add the meat and sliced vegetables, and fry until brown.

  2. Add the stock, herbs, peppercorns, cloves, and seasoning, and cook gently for 2 to 3 hours.

  3. Strain the mixture and return it to the saucepan.

Thicken and serve

  1. Bring to a boil, mix the flour smoothly with a little cold stock, and pour it into the soup.

  2. Simmer for 5 minutes longer, adjust seasoning to taste, and serve.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef neck or shin
Gives the soup its meaty flavour and body as it cooks slowly.
Butter
Browns the meat and vegetables, building roasted flavour for the stock.
Flour
Thickens the soup into a smooth gravy-like body when cooked briefly.
Stock
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavour of the whole soup.
Onion
Adds sweetness and aroma as it browns with the meat.

The step that matters

Mix the flour smoothly with cold stock before adding. Flour added directly to hot liquid clumps, because its starch grains swell on the outside before the inside can wet. Mixing it into cold stock first disperses the grains so the soup thickens smoothly.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, turnip, celery, parsley, thyme, clove. 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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