Home › The Principles of Cookery › GRAVY ESPAGNOLE (a highly-flavoured brown gravy)
GRAVY ESPAGNOLE (a highly-flavoured brown gravy)
As this gravy will keep good for three or four days, and is frequently required in domestic cookery, it is well to make more than will be used at one time, and put it aside until wanted. It should be looked at every day, and will keep longer if it is boiled occasionally. Put a piece of butter the size of a large egg into a stewpan, and, when it is melted, place on it a moderate-sized onion, cut into slices. Turn these over until they are lightly browned, then add a quarter of a pound of the lean of ham or bacon cut into dice (uncooked), a large carrot, scraped or cut into small pieces, two sprigs of parsley, one of thyme, a quarter of a tea-spoonful of finely-chopped lemon-rind, a dozen peppercorns, a blade of mace, and a bay-leaf. Pour in a cupful of cold water and shake the pan, or stir it occasionally, over a moderate fire for a quarter of an hour until the ingredients are brightly browned. Add very gradually a pint of good stock, and simmer gently for three-quarters of an hour. Strain, skim off the fat, and the gravy will be ready for use. Salt must be added if necessary, but this will depend upon the saltness of the ham. When no stock is at hand, half a pound of lean beef may be cut into small squares and fried with the rest, but when this is done a pint and a half of water should be added, and the gravy simmered an hour and a half. Another plan is to dissolve half a tea-spoonful of Bovril in the gravy. If a rich gravy is required, a glass of sherry or Madeira and a table-spoonful of ketchup may be put into the saucepan a few minutes before it is taken from the fire. To thicken the gravy, dissolve an ounce of butter in a saucepan, mix with it an ounce of flour, and stir it with a wooden spoon until brightly browned, add gradually the strained gravy, and boil. Sufficient for nearly a pint of gravy. Probable cost, 8d. per pint.
A compact Victorian espagnole, built on a browned mirepoix with ham rather than on a long-cooked roux base. The points below cover the units, the vaguer ingredients and the one step that decides whether it tastes rich or burnt.
- The hinge: brown, do not scorchThe vegetables and ham are browned in butter with only a cupful of water, over moderate heat, for about fifteen minutes. The water keeps the pan from catching while the sugars colour; if it evaporates before the ingredients are deep brown, add a splash more rather than letting anything blacken, since burnt onion turns the finished gravy bitter and no amount of stock will lift it.
- Butter the size of a large eggAbout 2 oz, or 55 g. The ounce of butter and ounce of flour for the thickening are exact as given, and make a brown roux for roughly a pint.
- Imperial pintsThe pint here is 20 fl oz (about 570 ml), not the US 16. The pint and a half of water in the stockless version is about 850 ml, and the finished yield is a little under 570 ml.
- A blade of maceOne flake of the dried aril that surrounds nutmeg. Whole blades are sold by spice merchants; a scant quarter-teaspoon of ground mace is the usual substitute, but add it late, as ground mace loses its perfume over a long simmer.
- Bovril and ketchupBovril is a salty beef extract, still sold; half a teaspoon is a seasoning, not a stock substitute. "Ketchup" here means mushroom or walnut ketchup, a thin, dark, savoury condiment, not the sweetened tomato sauce. A dash of Worcestershire or a spoonful of mushroom ketchup is nearer the intended flavour than modern tomato ketchup.
- Salt at the endBetween the ham, the stock and any Bovril, the gravy can arrive fully seasoned on its own. Taste only after straining and after any reduction with wine, when the salt has concentrated.
- StorageThe advice to keep it three or four days and boil it occasionally is Victorian larder practice in a kitchen without refrigeration. Cool it quickly, refrigerate within two hours and use within three days, or freeze it in small portions; reboiling a sauce that has sat warm all day is not a substitute for cold storage.
- Yield and costJust under a pint, as the recipe states, and usable as the base for smaller sauces. The 8d. per pint is a period retail estimate and has no modern equivalent.
Espagnole is one of the foundation brown sauces of French cookery; versions of it appear in eighteenth-century French cookery books, and it is Carême who is usually credited with setting it at the head of the brown sauces from which the rest of the repertoire descends. The name is usually explained by the Spanish ham said to have gone into the original, though that story is traditional rather than documented. What Cassell's offers is the domesticated English version: no day-long simmer of veal bones, no separate estouffade, just butter, an onion, some raw ham or bacon, a carrot and a bunch of herbs browned together and let down with stock. The batch-and-keep instruction is telling. A late-Victorian kitchen with a range alight most of the day and no refrigeration could treat a jar of brown gravy as a standing resource, re-boiled to keep it sweet and drawn on for made dishes through the week. The alternative using Bovril suggests the point at which commercial meat extracts were beginning to stand in for the stockpot in ordinary households.