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Another Receipt for Gravy-soup

A beef soup with gravy, onions, carrots, and a butter‑flour roux, finished with soy sauce, sherry, and cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,555 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Another Receipt for Gravy-soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. In a deep stewpan, combine the beef, onions, carrots, and bouillon.

  2. Set over high heat until the broth reduces, then lower the heat and simmer until it forms a glaze at the bottom.

  3. Add the proper amount of water and continue cooking.

Brown and stew

  1. Dredge the beef with flour, season with pepper and salt, and fry until browned.

  2. Stew the beef for six hours with 1 pint of water for each pound of meat and the vegetables, except for the fried onions.

Finish the soup

  1. After straining the soup and removing fat, mix the butter and flour until smooth and add to the soup.

  2. After 20 minutes, stir in the soy sauce, sherry, and cayenne pepper, then 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 + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  2. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  3. Onion + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  4. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  5. Carrot + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,606 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

Beef
Provides the meaty flavor and body that the broth is built on.
Flour
Thickens the soup, giving it body once mixed with butter and added.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the thickened soup.
Onions
Build sweetness and savory depth as they cook down into the broth.
Bouillon
Concentrates savory flavor as it reduces to a glaze.

The step that matters

Mixing the butter and flour into the soup. Flour added directly to hot liquid clumps, so it must be blended smooth first. Cooking it out lets the starch thicken evenly without a raw floury taste.

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, beef, flour, pepper, butter, sauce, sherry):

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Chivefits about as well
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, beef, flour, pepper, butter, sauce, sherry. 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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