Skip to main content
Main

Gravy Soup

A hearty soup made with a beef leg, water, herbs, onions, vegetables, and a touch of catsup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Celery and carrot 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 ↓

Gravy Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Wash and soak the leg of beef.

  2. Place it in a pot with 1 gallon of water and a large bunch of sweet herbs.

  3. Slice and fry the onions until golden brown, then add to the pot.

  4. Season with pepper, coarse sea salt, and mace.

  5. Simmer until the meat is tender.

Finish the soup

  1. Remove the meat and slice into celery, carrots, and turnips.

  2. Burn a crust and add it to the soup.

  3. Thicken with flour or vermicelli and stir in 1 tablespoon of catsup.

  4. For best results, make the soup a day in advance and refrigerate overnight to remove fat.

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. Celery + carrottop 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. Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  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

Leg of beef
Provides the meat and rich flavour that the broth is built on.
Flour
Thickens the soup as its starch swells in the hot liquid.
Vermicelli
Adds body and starch to the soup as it cooks.
Onions
Fried until golden brown, they add sweetness and savoury depth to the broth.
Catsup
Adds sweetness and acidity to season the finished soup.

The step that matters

Burn a crust. Charring the crust adds deep, roasted colour and flavour to the broth; if it is burnt past a toasted crust, it turns bitter and spoils the soup.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, onion, pepper, celery, carrot, turnip, flour. 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.

More beef soup recipes

Clear 34Brown 23Quick 12French 6Barley 5Economical 4 See all 245 →

You might also like

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipes