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Clear, Pale Gravy Soup or Consommé

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

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

Prepare the soup base

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

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

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

  4. Skim off any scum that rises.

  5. Add a pint of cold water to help clear it.

Simmer and clarify

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

  2. Let the soup simmer gently for 5 to 6.5 hours.

  3. Strain the soup through a fine cloth in a sieve.

  4. Once cooled, remove any fat from the surface.

Finish and serve

  1. Reheat the desired amount in a clean pan, adding salt and vinegar or sauce to taste.

  2. Serve with fried bread sippets.

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 flavour into the stock, giving the soup body as it simmers.
Lean beef
Contributes deep meaty flavour to the stock during long simmering.
Ham
Adds savoury, salty depth to the broth as it cooks.
Onions
Build aromatic sweetness and savoury depth in the stock.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body to the simmering broth.

The step that matters

Skimming the scum before adding the vegetables. Scum is coagulated protein and impurities that cloud the broth if left to mix in. Skimming as it rises, and adding cold water to help it settle, keeps the soup clear and clean-tasting.

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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