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Gravy for Fowls, Cheap
Take two ounces of lean ham, cut it into dice, and fry them in a very little butter until brightly browned. Pour over them gradually half a pint of stock, and add six peppercorns, a bunch of parsley, a bay-leaf, and half a slice of bread, toasted brown and hard, but not burnt. Simmer gently for three-quarters of an hour, strain, add a pinch of salt, if necessary, and serve as hot as possible. Probable cost, 4d. (See GRAVY MADE WITHOUT MEAT FOR FOWLS.)
A small brown gravy built on ham, stock and toasted bread rather than pan drippings — useful when a roast bird has given up too little fat to make a sauce. It takes about an hour from start to strain.
- The toast is the thickener and the colourThe toast is there for colour and a little body -- Half a slice browned hard, but not blackened, softens into the stock and darkens it. Burnt toast would turn the gravy bitter, which is presumably why the original specifies "brown and hard, but not burnt."
- Half a pint of stockAn imperial half-pint is 10 fl oz, about 284 ml, so a scant 1¼ US cups. It reduces over three-quarters of an hour, so expect to end with something under a cup of finished gravy.
- Add the stock graduallyPouring it in slowly over the fried ham helps lift the browned residue from the pan.
- Lean ham, two ouncesA 55 g piece of dry-cured ham or prosciutto end cut into small dice. It is there for salt and savour, not texture, and it goes in the strainer at the end — do not waste good centre-cut ham on it.
- Very little butterA teaspoon or so is a reasonable reading. Since the ham is specified lean, it will render little fat of its own, and too much butter will float on the finished sauce.
- Salt last, and taste firstHam plus reduced stock can arrive fully seasoned on its own, which is why the recipe says "if necessary." Modern commercial stock is saltier still.
- Straining and servingStrain and serve at once; the original insists on serving it "as hot as possible," and there is no flour or fat in it to hold it together.
Cassell's ran two recipes for the same problem — a roast fowl produces very little in the way of drippings, and a Victorian dinner table expected gravy — one made with meat and one without. The "cheap" in the title is doing real work: the book habitually prints a probable cost, here fourpence, so a cook could weigh a dish against the household budget before committing to it. The technique of browning bread hard and simmering it into stock for colour and body is much older than this book and predates the point at which commercial gravy browning and bouillon cubes became cheap and reliable in the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.