Skip to main content
Main

Gravy Soup

A hearty beef soup made with gravy stock, vegetables, herbs, and a flour roux.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Gravy Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Heat the butter or fat in a stewpan.

  2. Add the meat and sliced vegetables, and fry until browned.

  3. Add the gravy stock, herbs, peppercorns, cloves, and seasoning.

  4. Cook gently for about 2.5 hours.

Thicken and serve

  1. Strain the soup and return it to the saucepan.

  2. Boil the soup, then mix the flour smoothly with a little cold stock.

  3. Pour the flour mixture into the soup and simmer for a few more minutes.

  4. Adjust seasoning to taste and serve.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef neck or shin
Gives rich meaty flavour and body as it cooks slowly into the stock.
Butter or good fat
Browns the meat and vegetables, building savoury flavour from the start.
Flour
Thickens the soup so it has a smooth, fuller body.
Onion
Adds sweetness and savoury depth as it softens and browns.
Carrot
Adds natural sweetness and body to the stock.

The step that matters

Mixing the flour smoothly with cold stock before adding it. Flour dropped into hot liquid clumps as its starch grains swell unevenly on the outside. Mixing it smooth with cold stock first lets the starch disperse evenly, so the soup thickens without lumps.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, carrot, turnip, celery, parsley, thyme, clove):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, turnip, celery, parsley, thyme, clove. 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.

You might also like

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipes