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Soup

Another Brown Gravy Soup

A hearty soup made with browned gravy beef, onions, celery, carrots, turnips, and vermicelli.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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 ↓

Another Brown Gravy Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. In a stew pan, brown the beef with the chopped onions and butter, stirring to prevent burning.

  2. Add the water, celery, carrots, turnips, black pepper, and salt.

  3. Boil gently for 4 hours, then strain the soup.

  4. Refrigerate overnight and remove the fat the next day.

Finish and serve

  1. Heat the soup and add the cooked vermicelli.

  2. Boil for 10 minutes before serving.

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. Celery + peppertop 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

Gravy beef
Browned first, it builds the deep, savory flavor of the broth as it simmers.
Onions
Browning them with the beef adds sweetness and savory depth to the broth.
Butter
Helps the beef and onions brown and carries flavor into the broth.
Celery
Adds aromatic, vegetal flavor to the long-simmered broth.
Carrots
Contribute natural sweetness and body to the broth as they cook.
Vermicelli
Thin pasta that adds body and starch to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Browning the beef with onions and butter. Stirring to prevent burning matters because scorched fat and sugars turn bitter and dark the broth, while gentle browning builds rich, roasted flavor through the Maillard reaction.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

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