Gravy Soup

Ingredients

• 6 lb shin of beef
• 5 lb knuckle of veal
• 2 slices lean ham, pieces or trimmings
• 0.25 lb butter
• 2 onions
• 2 carrots
• 1 turnip
• 0.5 head celery
• 1 mace blade
• 6 cloves
• 1 bunch savoury herbs with endive
• to taste salt
• to taste pepper
• 3 lumps sugar
• 5 quarts soft water, boiling

Method

Cut the shin and knuckle into 3–4 cm pieces. Brown them hard in the butter over medium-high heat, working in batches so the meat colours rather than steams — you want a dark mahogany surface, not grey. Include the ham trimmings in the final batch. This simmering base will carry the whole soup; rushed browning leaves you with thin, wan stock.

Pour the boiling water straight onto the browned meat. The temperature shock arrests the cooking and prevents the proteins from bonding too tightly, which keeps your eventual stock clear. Bring back to a rolling simmer and skim aggressively for the first 20 minutes. You're removing the coagulated blood proteins and myoglobin that cloud the liquid — they rise as grey-white scum and must be cleared completely. Once the surface runs clean for a full minute, you're done skimming.

Add the onions, carrots, turnip, and celery in one go, along with the mace blade, cloves, herb bundle, salt, and sugar. These aromatics need time to yield their flavour compounds into the liquid, but only under sustained gentle heat — a rolling boil will fragment the vegetables and muddy the clarity you've just established. Maintain a bare simmer for six hours. The collagen in the beef shin and veal knuckle hydrolyses into gelatin over this time, thickening the stock naturally and developing the body that defines gravy soup.

After six hours, the meat should collapse at the slightest pressure; the vegetables will have given everything and turned to pulp. Let the pot settle undisturbed for 15 minutes — this allows the heavy sediment to sink and the fat to float. Skim every scrap of surface fat with a shallow spoon. Pour the liquid through a fine sieve into a clean vessel, leaving the sediment behind — don't press the solids or you'll force cloudiness back through.

Cool the stock completely — overnight in a cool larder or in an ice bath. The fat will set into a solid disc on the surface; lift it away cleanly. You'll see a layer of dark jelly at the bottom — this is your essence, rich in glutamates. Reheat gently, season to taste, and serve. Reserve that sediment separately for thick gravies and enriched sauces.