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Soup

Clear Gravy Soup

A clear soup made with ham, beef, veal, onions, turnips, carrots, celery, and cold water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery 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 ↓

Clear Gravy Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the meat

  1. Butter the inside of a tinned stew pot.

  2. Layer the ham, beef, and veal in the pot.

  3. Cover the pot and place it over high heat.

  4. When the meat begins to stick, turn it until browned.

Skim and simmer

  1. Cover the meat with cold water.

  2. When it starts to boil, add ½ cup of cold water to raise the scum.

  3. Skim the scum off and repeat adding ½ cup of cold water until no more scum rises.

  4. Prepare the vegetables while skimming.

  5. Add the vegetables to the soup and move the pot to a cooler part of the fire.

  6. Let it simmer gently for 1½ hours.

  7. Strain the soup through a fine cloth into a large bowl without squeezing the cloth.

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 + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + carrottop 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

Lean beef
Browns and releases flavour into the broth, giving body to the finished soup.
Veal
Adds gelatin from the bones and meat, giving the stock body and a richer mouthfeel.
Ham
Contributes savoury, salty flavour to the broth as it simmers.
White onions
Release sweetness and aromatic depth into the broth during long simmering.
Celery
Adds aromatic, savoury flavour to the broth.

The step that matters

Skimming the scum. Scum is coagulated protein and impurities that rise when the liquid boils. Adding cold water makes it rise and separate so it can be removed, which keeps the soup clear and clean-tasting.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, beef, veal, turnip, carrot, celery. 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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