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Carrots in Their Own Gravy
Wash, scrape, and slice the carrots. Put them into boiling salt and water, only just enough to cover them, and when they are tender let them boil fast till only two or three spoonfuls of the liquid remains. Put with the gravy a piece of brown thickening the size of a nut. Shake the saucepan till the gravy is thickened, and serve very hot. Time, one hour and a half. Sufficient, six large carrots for five persons.
A glazing method rather than a boiling one: the carrots cook in barely enough water to cover, and that water reduces to a few spoonfuls of sweet, concentrated liquid that becomes the sauce. Two things need attention — the thickening, which is a Victorian pantry staple, and the timing, which belongs to an older kind of carrot.
- Brown thickeningThis is brown roux: flour cooked in butter or dripping until nut-coloured, then cooled solid. Victorian cookery books commonly give it as a standing preparation to be made up in quantity and kept. A piece "the size of a nut" is probably somewhere between a rounded teaspoon and a tablespoon. Equal parts butter and flour cooked together until it smells toasted will do the same job.
- The hinge: reduce before thickeningThe dish depends on boiling the water down hard once the carrots are tender, so that what remains is sweet carrot essence rather than salted water. Add the thickening only when two or three spoonfuls are left, and shake rather than stir so the carrots stay whole.
- TimeAn hour and a half is long for sliced carrots, and the figure probably covers the hard reduction as well as the cooking; it may also assume larger, more mature carrots than are usual now. Modern carrots sliced into rounds are generally tender in 12 to 20 minutes; older, thick-cored carrots may want 30. Test with a knife tip and start reducing as soon as they yield.
- Only just enough to coverTake this literally. Use a saucepan the carrots roughly fill so the water line sits at their tops — a wide pan needs too much liquid and you will be boiling for a long time to get back to three spoonfuls.
- SaltSince the cooking water reduces to the sauce, salt lightly at the start. Water salted to taste at the beginning will be unpleasantly salty once it has been boiled down to a glaze.
- YieldSix large carrots is about 1 lb 8 oz to 2 lb, giving five modest side-dish portions. A knob of butter and chopped parsley stirred in at the end is in keeping with the period.
The interest of this dish is entirely economic: nothing is added but a scrap of thickening, and the "gravy" is simply the carrots' own cooking water concentrated. The phrase in their own gravy is found in Victorian cookery writing applied to other vegetables as well, distinguishing a vegetable finished with its own liquor from one dressed with meat stock or a made sauce — the cheaper option, and arguably the better-tasting one here, since carrots give up a good deal of sugar to their water. The brown thickening the recipe calls for reflects a kitchen in which such basic preparations were made up in advance and kept standing by rather than made fresh for a single dish of vegetables.