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Gravy or Soup Meats

A broth made by simmering ham with aromatics, then reducing the liquid to a jelly for sauces.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Gravy or Soup Meats

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ham

  1. Soak, scrape, and clean the ham thoroughly.

  2. Place the ham in a pot with enough water to cover it.

Make the broth

  1. Add onions, garlic, shallots, bay leaf, sweet herbs, cloves, peppercorns, and allspice.

  2. Seal the pot and simmer for about 3 hours.

  3. Strain the cooking liquid and reserve it.

Serve and store

  1. Remove the rind from the ham and serve with raspings or glazing.

  2. When boiling poultry or meat, add the reserved liquid and reduce it to about 3 pints.

  3. Let it cool to form a jelly for sauces.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Garlic + shallottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,000 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Clove + shallottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Shallot + allspicetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together386 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Ham
Provides the meaty flavour that gives the broth its body and savour.
Onions
Release sweetness and aromatic depth as they cook slowly in the liquid.
Shallots
Add a mild, sweet onion-like aroma to the broth.
Cloves
Contribute warm, spiced aroma to the broth.

The step that matters

Reducing the reserved liquid. Reducing concentrates the flavour and the gelatin released from the ham and bones, so the cooled liquid sets into a jelly. Reducing too little leaves it too thin to set; reducing too far makes it overly salty and strong.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, clove, garlic, shallot, allspice):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, clove, garlic, shallot, allspice. 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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