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Gravy for Grills and Broils
Rub a table-spoonful of flour into an ounce of good butter. Mix with it half a pint of good strong stock, a table-spoonful of ketchup, the juice and rind of a quarter of a lemon, a tea-spoonful of made mustard, half the quantity of the essence of anchovies, half a tea-spoonful of pepper, three grains of cayenne, a tea-spoonful of chopped capers, and a shallot, finely minced. Put these ingredients into a saucepan. Let them boil, then simmer gently for five or six minutes, strain, and serve. Probable cost, 4d. Sufficient for five or six persons.
A sharp, savoury pan sauce of the beurre-manié type, meant to be poured over grilled chops and steaks. Most of the work of translating it lies in the ketchup, the anchovy essence and the imperial measures.
- The hinge: how the flour goes inRubbing a tablespoon of flour into an ounce (about 2 tablespoons) of butter makes a beurre manié. Rather than mixing it into cold stock, bring the stock to a simmer and whisk the paste in in small pieces, or it will sit in lumps that the straining will simply remove.
- Half a pintAn imperial half-pint is 10 fl oz, or about 1¼ US cups. With an ounce of butter and a tablespoon of flour this gives a sauce a shade thicker than pouring cream.
- KetchupIn a Victorian British kitchen an unqualified 'ketchup' most often meant mushroom or walnut ketchup — thin, dark, salty, without tomato or sugar — though tomato ketchup was also known by this date. Tomato ketchup will make the sauce sweet and pink. Use mushroom ketchup if you can find it, otherwise a dash of Worcestershire sauce is closer in spirit than the modern bottle.
- Essence of anchoviesA bottled anchovy extract, still sold in some places as anchovy essence. Half a teaspoon of anchovy paste, or one small mashed anchovy fillet, stands in well.
- Made mustard"Made" means mixed and ready, as opposed to dry mustard powder. Any smooth prepared English or Dijon mustard works.
- Three grains of cayenneA grain is roughly 65 mg, so this is a genuine pinch and not a rounded measure. Treat it as such and add more only after tasting.
- The lemon rind and the shallotPare the rind in strips with no white pith, and mince the shallot fine. Both are aromatics only — the straining at the end removes them, along with the capers, so the sauce arrives smooth.
- TimingFive or six minutes at a bare simmer is enough to cook out the raw flour and marry the flavours; there is no need to take it further, and long steeping of the pared rind risks bitterness.
- Yield and costFive or six servings as written, which from about a cup and a quarter comes to roughly three tablespoons spooned over each chop (a little less after straining). The 'probable cost, 4d.' is the book's own reckoning in pre-decimal pence and is no guide to anything now.
A grill or a broil comes off the fire with no pan juices to make gravy from — the fat has dripped into the coals — so a stock-based sauce of this kind supplied the depth that roasting would have given. Its flavour profile — anchovy, mustard, cayenne, lemon, capers, ketchup — is the same set of savoury notes found in the bottled 'store sauces' of the period, and the family resemblance to Worcestershire sauce and to the older English fish and steak sauces reflects a shared eighteenth-century English tradition of building keeping-sauces on salted fish and spice.