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To Make Brown or Gravy Soup

A brown beef soup made by browning beef and bones, simmering with vegetables and herbs for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

To Make Brown or Gravy Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pot

  1. Break the beef in several places and cut it from the bones.

  2. Remove part of the marrow and place it at the bottom of the pot. Use butter if no marrow is available.

  3. Add the meat and bones to the pot and brown them on one side, ensuring they do not burn.

Make the broth

  1. Add ½ cup of cold water.

  2. Add a little salt to draw out the juice from the meat.

  3. After 15 minutes, add enough cold water to cover the meat.

  4. Add the sliced vegetables, sweet herbs, and whole peppers.

  5. Let the soup boil slowly for 4 hours.

Finish and clarify

  1. Remove from heat and let it stand to settle.

  2. Skim off the fat.

  3. Strain the soup through a fine sieve to clear it.

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. Carrot + turniptop 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. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Turnip + oniontop 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

Beef shin or rump
Provides the meat and bones that release flavour and body into the broth as it simmers.
Marrow or butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour and gives the broth a rounder mouthfeel.
Onions
Contribute sweetness and savoury depth as they soften and release their flavour into the broth.
Carrots
Add gentle sweetness and aroma to the broth.

The step that matters

Browning the meat and bones. Browning builds deeper, roasted flavour through the Maillard reaction. Too much heat can burn the surface, leaving bitter notes that spread into the broth.

Swap the onion

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

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

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