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Gravy in Haste
Take half a pound of lean beef, an onion, and a carrot, and cut them all into very small pieces. Put them into a saucepan, with a piece of butter or good beef dripping the size of a large nut, and place them over a fire till they are brightly browned all over. Keep stirring the saucepan, to prevent their burning, and add three-quarters of a pint of water, a sprig of parsley and thyme, six peppercorns, two cloves, and half a salt-spoonful of salt. Simmer gently, skim, and strain, and the gravy is ready for use. Time, half an hour to boil the gravy. Sufficient for three-quarters of a pint of gravy. Probable cost, about 7d. per pint.
A quick brown stock rather than a thickened gravy: half a pound of beef, aromatics, and half an hour on the stove. Everything depends on how far you take the browning.
- The hinge is the browningThe beef, onion and carrot need to colour deeply — a proper mahogany on the pan bottom — before any water goes in. That fond is the only source of colour and flavour here; pale meat gives grey, thin gravy no amount of simmering will rescue.
- Cut small, and mean itQuarter-inch dice or smaller. With only thirty minutes of simmering, extraction depends entirely on surface area, which is why this differs from a long-boiled stock.
- "A piece the size of a large nut"Read this as roughly a tablespoon of butter or dripping; period "size of a nut" measures ran anywhere from about 15 g to an ounce. Dripping browns better and will not scorch as readily as butter.
- Liquid measureThree-quarters of an imperial pint is 15 fl oz, a scant 2 cups US. The recipe gives the finished yield as the same three-quarters of a pint; in practice you will lose some to evaporation and skimming unless you top up.
- Salt-spoonfulA Victorian salt-spoon is usually reckoned at about 1/4 teaspoon, so half is about 1/8 teaspoon: a very light seasoning for three-quarters of a pint.
- Not a thickened gravyNothing here binds. This is what a modern kitchen would call a quick jus, used to moisten a roast, a hash or a made dish. For a coating sauce, whisk it into a small roux or reduce it further.
- Skim, then strainSkim while it simmers, not after; the fat and scum emulsify back in if left. Strain through a fine sieve and press the solids lightly — hard pressing clouds it.
- Yield and keepingEnough to sauce a dish for three or four. It keeps three days refrigerated and freezes well in ice-cube trays, which is more useful than making it fresh each time.
The title tells you the purpose: the standard household gravy of the period was drawn from a stock-pot kept going for hours or days, and a cook without one needed a substitute in the time it took to roast a small joint. The technique — brown the meat and root vegetables hard in fat, then wet them — is the same logic as a French jus or the brown "cullis" of earlier English cookery books, compressed into thirty minutes by chopping everything fine. The costing of about sevenpence a pint is a reminder of what these dictionaries were for: they were bought by households running on a fixed weekly allowance, and a recipe that turned half a pound of cheap lean beef into sauce for a family dinner earned its page.