Name: Gravy Soup
Ingredients: 1 leg of beef; 1 gallon water; 1 large bunch sweet herbs; 2 large onions, sliced; 2 blades of mace; 3 cloves; 20 berries of allspice; 40 black peppercorns; vegetables of choice (carrots, turnips, celery)

Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Gravy Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Wash and soak the leg of beef.
Break the bone of the leg of beef.
Cut the vegetables small.

Make the soup

Place the leg of beef in a pot with water and sweet herbs.
Add sliced onions, mace, cloves, allspice, and black peppercorns.
Stew until the soup reaches your desired richness.
Simmer the vegetables until tender.

Serve

Remove the meat from the pot for serving.
Reserve some of the gravy.

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.

Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,874 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,173 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,002 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,418 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Clove + carrottop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,873 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Leg of beef: Provides the meat and bones that release flavour and body into the broth as it stews.
Sliced onions: Add sweetness and savoury depth to the broth as they cook down.
Black peppercorns: Add a sharp, aromatic heat that seasons the broth.
Vegetables of choice: Add sweetness, texture and body to the soup as they simmer until tender.

Swap the mace

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

Thymefits better
Winter savoryfits better
Marjoramfits better
Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, onion, clove, allspice, 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.