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Gravy Soup

A veal broth soup with carrots, turnips, celery, onions, sorrel, lettuce, chervil, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Sorrel and chervil match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 247 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Gravy Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Boil the carrots, turnips, celery, and button onions until nearly done.

  2. Scald the sorrel, lettuce, and chervil separately until ready.

Finish the soup

  1. Add the scalded greens to the boiling veal broth.

  2. Season with coarse sea salt and add a little coloring liquid.

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. Sorrel + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together247 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Lettuce + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together396 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Sorrel + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together317 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + sorreltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together179 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Turnip + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together184 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 broth
Forms the liquid base and carries the flavor of the soup.
Carrots
Add sweetness and body as they soften in the broth.
Turnips
Add mild sweetness and a tender, soft texture once cooked.
Sorrel
Adds a bright, sharp acidity that lifts the broth.

The step that matters

Scald the greens separately until ready. Sorrel, lettuce, and chervil are tender and overcook quickly, turning dull and mushy. Scalding them separately and adding them to the boiling broth at the end keeps their color and texture bright.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, carrot, turnip, celery, sorrel, lettuce, chervil):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, carrot, turnip, celery, sorrel, lettuce, chervil. 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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