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Soup

Gravy Soup

A hearty soup made with stock, dripping, flour, vegetables, mace, bay leaves, sugar, vinegar, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Gravy Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and wash the turnip and onions, and scrape the carrots.

Make the soup

  1. In a pan, heat the dripping until very hot, then add the flour and stir until browned.

  2. Add the stock and all remaining ingredients.

  3. Simmer for one hour, then strain 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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Clove + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Clove + turniptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Browned in hot dripping, it thickens the stock and gives the soup a toasted, gravy-like flavour.
Dripping
Fat that carries the heat for browning the flour and adds rich savoury flavour.
Stock
Forms the liquid base of the soup, carrying the flavour of the other ingredients.
Onions
Release sweetness and savoury depth as they simmer in the stock.

The step that matters

Browning the flour in the hot dripping. Flour must be stirred until evenly browned in hot fat; underheated or under-stirred flour stays pale and tastes raw, and scorched flour turns bitter. Cooking the flour first also removes its raw starch taste and helps it thicken smoothly.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, clove, carrot, onion, turnip, sugar, vinegar):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, clove, carrot, onion, turnip, sugar, vinegar. 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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