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Soup

Gravy Soup

A vegetable soup made with strong stock, carrots, turnip, celery, and optional vermicelli, macaroni, carrot slices, or fried bread.

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 ↓

Gravy Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine 3 quarts of strong stock, a pinch of sweet herbs, 1 chopped carrot, 1 chopped turnip, and 1 head of celery in a large pot.

  2. Simmer the mixture until the vegetables are tender.

  3. Remove the celery before serving.

  4. Serve the soup with optional vermicelli, macaroni, thin slices of carrot, or small pieces of fried bread.

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. Carrot + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,628 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Celery + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,110 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Carrot
Adds sweetness and body to the stock as it softens during simmering.
Turnip
Adds mild sweetness and soft texture to the broth as it cooks.
Celery
Adds savory, aromatic flavor to the stock and is removed before serving.

Swap the carrot

The recipe marks carrot as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turnip, celery, bread):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Carrotthe original
  3. Parsnipfits about as well
  4. Lettucefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against turnip, celery, bread. 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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