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Gravy

in the British Isles and areas culturally influenced by them, is … well, gravy, a term fully comprehensible to those who use it, but something of a mystery in the rest of the world.

Ideally, gravy as made in the British kitchen is composed of residues left in the tin after roasting meat, deglazed with good stock, and seasoned carefully. (Many cooks incorporate a spoonful of flour before adding the liquid but this practice is frowned on by purists.) Gravy varies in colour from pale gold-brown to burnt umber, and in thickness from something with little more body than water to a substantial sauce of coating consistency. In French meat cookery, jus is roughly equivalent to honestly made thin gravy in the British tradition.

Should gravy be classified as a kind of sauce? Simon (1983) thought not; gravy was distinguished from sauce by being ‘made in the same pan in which meat or fish has been cooked, and almost, if not entirely from the juices extracted during cooking’, but thickening with flour or egg yolks made it a sauce (and no longer a gravy). If this ruling is accepted, then the ‘red-eye gravy’ which is famous in the American south must qualify as gravy. Evan Jones (1981) describes how it is made:

To enhance ham with red-eye gravy, put the fried slices aside and add one-half cup of ice water to the drippings, letting it bubble until it turns red. Some cooks use strong black coffee; others stir in one teaspoon of brown sugar until it caramelizes, then add the ice water.

The etymology of the word gravy, which probably comes from an Old French culinary term, has puzzling aspects. However, it seems clear enough that in the 14th and 15th centuries ‘graue’ meant sauces of broth, almonds, and spices used for white meats, fish, and vegetables. Ayto (1993) suggests that it was only in the late 16th century that

the critical change between obtaining this [the gravy] in the form of broth, from boiling the meat, and in the form of juices, produced by roasting, seems to have taken place…. In the seventeenth century, the practice was to make cuts in a joint when it was part-roasted, to allow the juices to escape (a special press was invented to squeeze them out). Later, it became more usual to make gravy separately from a different, inferior cut of meat—typically from gravy beef, part of the leg used for that purpose (Hannah Glasse has a recipe which calls for laying ‘a pound of gravy beef over your chickens’, 1747).

From the 18th century onwards, however, there was something of a downhill trend. Dallas (1877) said gloomily that the gravy served with roast meat in England was often a mockery.

While the sirloin is turning before the fire, the cook takes a boatful of boiling water which she colours with caramel and seasons with salt. She pours this gradually over the sirloin, she catches it again in a dish below, takes off the fat; and this is what she calls ‘its own gravy’.

Kitchen tricks involving burnt onions, caramelized sugar, ‘gravy browning’, and stock cubes are modern descendants of this practice. Indeed, numerous ‘gravy mixes’ or ‘granules’ (dehydrated compounds of colourings, flavourings, and thickeners) are to be had, for use with the meat residue, or in its stead. Yet in many homes in Britain a true gravy is still made; and this remains the most delicious accompaniment for the meat from which it comes and an essential feature of a meat dish. Should it be lacking, and especially in the north of England, the voice of the chief male at table will be raised in that most terrible and touching of remonstrances: ‘Where's t'gravy, then?’

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