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Gravy Soup

A soup made from boiled leg of lamb, turnips, peas, and potatoes, finished with gravy from the lamb drippings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and potato work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 562 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Gravy Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the lamb and vegetables

  1. Boil the leg of lamb until tender.

  2. Prepare turnips, peas, and potatoes by peeling and chopping.

Serve

  1. Serve the boiled lamb with the vegetables.

  2. Make gravy from the lamb drippings.

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. Turnip + potatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together562 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + peastop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,350 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Peas + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,016 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  4. Lamb + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together520 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Lamb + peastop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together650 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Leg of lamb
Supplies the main meat and the drippings used to make the gravy.
Potatoes
Soften during cooking and add starch that gives body and a hearty texture.
Turnips
Add a mild, slightly sweet flavour and a firm texture when cooked.
Peas
Add sweetness and a soft, tender texture to the dish.

The step that matters

Boil the leg of lamb until tender. Connective tissue in lamb breaks down slowly with gentle, steady heat. A hard, rapid boil tightens and toughens the muscle fibres, so keep the liquid at a gentle simmer and cook until the meat is fully tender.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, turnip, potato):

  1. Lentilsfits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Chickpeafits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, turnip, potato. 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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