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GRAVY IN HASTE (another way)
Dissolve a tea-spoonful of Bovril in half a pint of boiling water. Fry a minced carrot and carrot and onion in a little butter or dripping, until lightly browned, pour the liquid over them, let all boil together for ten minutes, add a dessert-spoonful of mushroom or walnut ketchup, skim, strain, and serve. Probable cost, 3d. Sufficient for half a pint of gravy.
A quick meatless-stock gravy built on a spoonful of Bovril rather than pan drippings. The whole point is speed, so the only real technique is getting genuine colour on the vegetables before the liquid goes in.
- Brown the vegetables properly"Lightly browned" is doing the work here — the colour and sweetness from the carrot and onion is all the flavour this gravy has beyond the extract. Rushing it gives you salty brown water.
- The duplicated wordThe text reads "a minced carrot and carrot and onion," plainly a typesetting slip. Read it as one carrot and one onion, both finely chopped.
- Half a pintAn Imperial half-pint is 10 fl oz, or 1¼ US cups. A dessert-spoonful is about 2 teaspoons; a teaspoonful of Bovril is roughly a level teaspoon of the paste.
- BovrilStill sold, and still the same idea: a salty beef-extract paste. Marmite or any yeast extract works the same way with a different flavour. Bear in mind extracts are very salty, so taste before adding any salt at the end.
- Mushroom and walnut ketchupNeither is the tomato condiment. Both are thin, dark, intensely savoury vinegar-based sauces; mushroom ketchup is still made commercially, walnut ketchup rarely. Worcestershire sauce or a dash of soy stands in acceptably.
- It will be thinNothing in the recipe thickens the liquid — this is a thin gravy as written. For a modern coating consistency, cook a teaspoon of flour into the butter with the vegetables before adding the liquid, or reduce the strained gravy further.
- Ten minutes is the maximumBoil much longer and the extract concentrates into something aggressively salty as the water goes off. Skim, strain, and serve straight away.
- YieldThe recipe gives the yield only as half a pint. Doubling scales cleanly, though you will want a wider pan so the vegetables brown rather than steam.
- Probable costThreepence in pre-decimal money — the book quotes a probable cost for its recipes, and this is a cheap one.
Cassell's gives more than one "gravy in haste" — this one is headed "another way" — because the ordinary Victorian gravy depended on roast drippings, and a household without a joint in the oven still needed something to pour. Bovril was launched under that name in 1886, and its appearance in reference cookery books of this kind suggests how quickly a proprietary product could become a pantry staple. The mushroom and walnut ketchups called for at the end belong to an older tradition entirely — long-keeping bottled savoury sauces that English kitchens had used to sharpen made dishes since the eighteenth century, well before commercial meat extract existed. The two together, one recent and one long-established, are a fair snapshot of a late-Victorian store cupboard.