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Another Receipt for Gravy Soup

A hearty beef soup thickened with gravy, flavored with onions, carrots, soy sauce, sherry, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 21,601 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Another Receipt for Gravy Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Combine the beef, onions, carrots, and bouillon in a deep stewpan.

  2. Set over a brisk fire until the broth reduces.

  3. Boil gently until it forms a glaze at the bottom.

  4. Add the appropriate amount of water and continue cooking.

Brown and stew the beef

  1. Dredge the beef with flour.

  2. Season the beef with pepper and salt.

  3. Fry the beef until browned.

  4. Stew the beef for six hours with a pint of water for each pound of meat and the vegetables.

Finish and serve

  1. Strain the soup to remove fat.

  2. Thicken the soup with butter and flour mixed smoothly.

  3. After twenty minutes, add soy sauce, sherry, and cayenne pepper.

  4. Serve hot.

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 + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  2. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  3. Beef + carrottop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,606 recipes

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

  4. Beef + meattop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,533 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Provides the meat flavour and body of the soup as it stews for hours.
Flour
Coats the beef for browning and, mixed with butter, thickens the finished soup.
Butter
Adds richness and, blended with flour, helps thicken the soup smoothly.
Onions
Build savoury, sweet depth in the broth as they cook down.
Carrots
Add sweetness and body to the broth during the long stew.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aroma that brighten the rich, long-cooked broth.

The step that matters

Thicken the soup with butter and flour mixed smoothly. Flour lumps form if it is added without first being blended smoothly with the butter, so the soup will thicken unevenly. Mixing the two into a smooth paste before stirring them into hot liquid lets the starch disperse and thicken evenly.

Swap the carrot

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, meat, onion, butter, flour, 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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