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Cullis, or Rich Gravy
Take the bones of a large leg of mutton, or of a large piece of beef. A ham bone or a little bacon rind may be added. Break into small pieces and put into a large saucepan with five pints of water. Bring to a boil, and let it simmer very gently for five hours, being careful that it keeps on simmering slowly all the time, then strain it. Skim it carefully. If there be time, leave it until the next day, so that the fat may be entirely removed. Return it to the saucepan, and put with it a large onion stuck with three cloves, a bay-leaf, half a tea-spoonful of bruised celery-seed tied in a muslin bag, or a few sticks of celery, a large carrot sliced, a bunch of savoury herbs, two tea-spoonfuls of salt, a tea-spoonful of white pepper, and a blade of mace. Simmer these gently for two hours; strain; stir into the mixture a tea-spoonful of Bovril and a little browning. Thicken it with a table-spoonful of brown thickening, or with from one to two tablespoonfuls of flour mixed smoothly with a little cold water and added gradually to the contents of the saucepan, and let it simmer twenty minutes longer. If too thick, a little water may be added; if not thick enough, stew it a little longer. Strain it from the vegetables before putting it aside. This gravy will keep a week, but in hot weather it would be well to boil it up once or twice. Time, eight hours. Probable cost, 6d., exclusive of the bones. Sufficient for one pint and a half.
A Victorian foundation sauce: bone broth reduced, re-infused with aromatics, then lightly thickened. Nothing here is difficult, but several of the ingredients and measures need translating.
- The hinge: keep it at a bare simmerBoth long cookings must never reach a rolling boil, or emulsified fat and fine particles will cloud the liquid and no amount of straining will clear it. Aim for the odd lazy bubble breaking the surface, lid ajar.
- Imperial pintsCassell's pints are 20 fl oz, so five pints is about 2.8 litres (3 US quarts) and the yield of a pint and a half is roughly 850 ml. Expect real reduction over seven hours; top up in the first stage if the bones threaten to break the surface.
- Brown thickeningThis is the period's name for flour dry-browned in a pan, or slowly cooked with butter to a nut colour, and kept in a jar for gravies. The recipe offers one to two tablespoonfuls of plain flour, mixed smooth with cold water, as the alternative to a single tablespoonful of it.
- Bovril and browningBovril is a salty beef extract and still sold; a teaspoon is there for colour and savour, not nutrition. "Browning" means gravy browning, essentially burnt-sugar caramel, sold today as gravy browning or made by darkening sugar in a dry pan. Both are optional if your bones were well roasted first.
- Blade of maceA whole flake of the lacy aril around a nutmeg, not ground mace. If you only have ground, use a scant pinch and strain through muslin, since it will not settle out.
- Salt and pepperTwo teaspoons of salt into what reduces to under a litre, plus a teaspoon of Bovril, lands high by modern taste. Salt at the end instead, especially if the ham bone or bacon rind goes in.
- Roast the bonesThe recipe starts them raw, which gives a pale, mild cullis and explains the later reliance on browning. Half an hour at 425F first gives colour and depth without artificial help.
- StorageIgnore "this gravy will keep a week." That advice belongs to a cold larder and daily reboiling. Refrigerate and use within three or four days, or freeze in small portions; the flour in it makes it slightly less stable than plain stock.
Cullis is the English spelling of the French coulis, from couler, to strain or flow, and for a long stretch of its history it meant broadly this: a strong strained meat essence held ready to enrich other dishes. Eighteenth-century English cooks inherited it from the French court kitchens, and writers such as Hannah Glasse were well known for mocking the extravagance of French cookery. By the time Cassell's compiled this entry the cullis had shrunk to a thrifty household job for leftover bones, and the giveaway is the teaspoon of Bovril: the beef extract took that name in the 1880s and its appearance in a classic French-derived sauce shows how quickly commercial concentrates worked their way into the professional-minded British kitchen. The costing at sixpence, "exclusive of the bones," tells the same story from the other side, a household expected to have bones already.