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Gravy (One of the best tests)

One of the best tests of a good cook, in our opinion, is good gravy. Good gravy should be perfect in all the four following particulars:--Flavour, colour, smell, and consistency. How very often, especially in private houses, do you get gravy--or, rather, so-called gravy--in the shape of thin beef-tea, or else it comes up resembling gruel not only in colour, but absolutely in taste!

In speaking of gravy, we will first refer to the gravy that is naturally formed in roasting a joint; and secondly, to that far higher branch of cooking--viz. good gravy served in a small tureen with chickens, ducks, game, etc.

First, the gravy naturally formed in roasting a joint--say, a leg of mutton. We will compare two legs of mutton as they appear when sent to table, which we will call, respectively, the cheap lodging-house leg, and the gentleman's-house leg. The first will be generally sent to table surrounded with a thick greasy gravy resembling light-brown gruel, and indeed differs but little in appearance, flavour, and consistency from the gravy generally sent up surrounding roast veal. The method pursued is as follows:--First, the joint has been hung up before the fire or placed in the oven in the usual way, a large pan (called the dripping-pan) having been placed underneath it to catch the fat. The joint, having been roasted sufficiently, has been probably dredged with flour--i.e. some flour has been shaken over it from a round tin box with holes in the lid. After a time, the woman cooking the joint has unhooked it, or taken it out of the oven, and placed it on a dish which ought to be a hot one; she has then taken a basin and poured off the greater portion of the fat in the dripping-pan into it, leaving the sediment or dregs in the pan. She has then poured a little water into the dripping-pan, and given it a rinse, and poured this into a saucepan or frying-pan; but as this appears to her too thin, she proceeds to thicken it in the following rough-and-ready way:--She first adds to the contents of her saucepan a tea-spoonful or more of ordinary flour, this latter being first mixed with a little cold water, and the whole is then briskly stirred with a spoon, brought to a boil, and poured over the meat. This is the ordinary elementary and most unscientific method of thickening gravy. There are many small families where the master of the house goes out early every morning, returning home to supper, and where but one joint a week is cooked--viz. the Sunday early dinner. The leg of mutton is the usual joint, and is invariably prepared in the way we have described. Now, there are thousands of persons who prefer a leg of mutton cooked this way to any other, just as they would prefer a lettuce with half a pint of vinegar with it, to one dressed with mayonnaise sauce from the hands of a Soyer. It is, perhaps, as well that all our tastes are not alike. The proper method of serving up the gravy is as follows:--Avoid two things--viz. flour and grease. Have you ever seen a spoon dipped in the gravy of a joint, and lifted? On one side a film of fat hangs. Now, when I see this, the effect on the appetite is exactly similar to a sudden lurch on board ship, when, after a little misgiving, you have taken your seat in the cabin at breakfast. We will suppose the leg, as before, sufficiently roasted. Then take the dripping-pan carefully, and pour off slowly from a corner of the dripping-pan all the fat into a small basin. At the bottom of the clear hot fat or dripping in the dripping pan will be seen a brown sediment. This is really the concentrated gravy, and the cook's object is to pour off all the grease and yet retain the sediment. With a little care this can be done easily. Next place the dripping-pan under the boiler-tap, and pour about half a pint or a little more of boiling water into it, and with an iron spoon simply wash off all the brown streaks and spots on the dripping-pan. These brown marks are really gravy dried up from the action of the heat, and very much resemble in composition what is known as extract of meat. Having stirred up all the water thoroughly in the well of the dripping-pan, the gravy can now be poured through a strainer over the joint. This gravy should be clear and bright, and very nearly free from fat. Of course, some little amount of fat is unavoidable, and this will make its appearance in the shape of wafers during the cooling process which takes place during carving, but if proper care has been exercised the gravy will not be speedily covered with large cakes of fat, nor will that dreadful hanging from the spoon take place, with the result of setting you against your dinner almost before you commence. Some will say, however, "Ah, but you can't get the mutton nice and brown without flouring it at the finish!" First, I deny this if the fire is really a fierce one; secondly, if you use flour to brown the joint, I would suggest that it is quite possible to flour the joint without flouring the dripping-pan, by simply taking the latter away, and placing a tin under the meat for a little while. The joint can then be dredged, and pushed closer to the fire at the finishing of the roasting to brown, while the cook goes on with the gravy in the manner we have pointed out.

I have here again given the ordinary way in which most cooks in fairly well-to-do families cook a plain joint. The gravy to a haunch, loin, or saddle of mutton is obtained in exactly the same manner. It is, however, an improvement to substitute a little broth--I do not mean stock--for the boiling water; for instance, if there are some trimmings from the joint, including a good-sized bone, place these on the fire in a saucepan with some water and a pinch of salt, and let them simmer as long as you like, taking care there is little or no grease on the top, and use this to pour into the dripping-pan instead of the plain boiling water. If the gravy is wished to be particularly good, stock--i.e. broth made from meat, flavoured with onion, parsley, celery, etc.--may be used in the case of a joint of beef, but it is really quite unnecessary. In the case of mutton or lamb it is absolutely objectionable. The great desideratum in roast mutton is simplicity. Hot and red from the gravy being in it, and not blue from being underdone, and served as simply as possible in its own gravy, is what the really simple English palate most prefers.

Recollect, the highest cooking is often the perfection of simplicity. Good beef and mutton give off, as a rule, plenty of good gravy. Lamb, veal, and pork but little; these three latter kinds of meat, which in passing we would mention require longer cooking in comparison to their size than either mutton or beef, should have a little gravy made separately. Only in the case of lamb, remember, have a very simple broth made from lamb-bones or mutton-bones, or it will overpower the flavour of the lamb. But in reality lamb does not want much gravy if it is brown and crisp, and has good wholesome mint sauce served with it.

We next come to the ordinary gravy for roast fowls, chickens, game, etc., the principal difficulty in the preparation of which will generally be found to be the thickening; and as this question of thickening lies at the root of many failures, both in soups, gravies, and entrees, we shall have to dwell on it at some length. This gravy is made from stock. It is, however, of course, impossible to describe everything at once. We are of necessity compelled to use such words as "stock" without describing what stock means. We will treat the subject "stock" more fully another time, in addition to the ample and clear directions given under the letter S.

We will briefly state stock to be the juice of meat--beef, veal, etc.--extracted by placing it in water, and allowing it to simmer slowly for a long time, extra flavour being imparted to the "meat tea" by the addition of various vegetables and herbs, such as onions parsley, carrots, turnips, celery, etc. Good stock made in the old-fashioned way requires a pound of meat to every quart, and is consequently somewhat expensive. On another occasion we shall point out various methods by which stock can be made without this allowance of one pound to a quart. Now stock, however made, although if done properly is a jelly when cold, is of the consistency of water when hot. By thickening we mean the process by which the stock is brought, when hot, from the consistency of water to that of cream.

A great many cooks, by means of having plenty of meat placed at their disposal, often succeed in the early stage of gravy--i.e. they get the stock good and strong, although of a poor colour. It is too early yet in our lessons on the Principles of Cookery to describe how good stock may be made to assume a bright golden colour by simply being left to make its own colour in the stock-pot, and consequently it will be more practical to show how to make a light-coloured stock into good brown gravy. We have already described the elementary process of thickening by simply adding flour; the next stage in advance is flour and butter combined. This is, perhaps, the most common of all methods. A cook will place a small amount of butter on a plate, and by its side a little heap of flour. She will place this plate in front of the fire for the butter to dissolve, and will then, with a steel knife, or, if a trifle more advanced in knowledge, with a spoon, knead the butter and flour together, add this to the stock, stirring it in till it boils, when the stock will become thick in proportion to the amount of butter and flour put in. By extravagantly using extract of meat, or colouring of some sort, such as sugar, or still worse, a colouring ball, a certain amount of brown colour is imparted to the gravy, which, if the stock is really good and well flavoured and the pepper not forgotten, will be by no means bad. What, however, is the drawback? The flour has been used raw, and a keen palate will detect the flavour we have mentioned and described as "gruelly." What, however, is the remedy for this? Let the flour be fried instead of raw; or, in other words, instead of simply using butter and flour to thicken the stock, use brown thickening, or brown roux as the French call it; and let me here tell cooks that in the end they will absolutely save both time and trouble by making some of this roux or brown thickening beforehand in a fairly good quantity, as when it is made it will keep for a very long time.

We all know the difference in the taste of a piece of pie-crust before it is baked and afterwards--one tastes of the flour, the other has a rich taste altogether different. Just such is the difference between ordinary butter and flour and brown thickening. In making thick mock-turtle soup, brown thickening is used to impart that rich flavour which is the characteristic of all thick soups. It would be a most instructive experiment to a young cook if she has a trustworthy taste to try the difference in the flavour of a little good stock or soup; the one thickened with ordinary butter and flour raw, and the other with brown thickening, which we will now describe how to make at somewhat fuller length than would be justifiable in a recipe which, as we have before said, necessarily presupposes a certain amount of knowledge. Suppose, then, a cook to possess some fine dry flour--say, half a pound--the same quantity of butter, an enamelled stewpan, a clear brisk fire, and an onion. First place the butter in the stewpan, and melt it till it runs to what cooks call oil. It will be found that there is a white scum at the top, and a milky sediment at the bottom. Recollect, melt the butter, but do not boil it--simply melt it. Skim the frothy top, and pour off what may be called the clarified butter, leaving the milky sediment in the pan. Now you have got rid of what is often called the milk in the butter. Next take the stewpan, and having wiped it clean, pour back the clarified butter into it, and gradually mix in the dried and sifted flour: this will make a sort of pudding, which will all cling together, and will not--or ought not if proper care has been taken to follow these directions--cling to the stewpan. Keep this pudding over the fire, and keep stirring with an iron or wooden spoon till it begins to change colour--i.e. it will gradually from being almost white turn to the colour of underdone pie-crust or the covers of those old-fashioned books which treat of mediaeval times. As soon as the colour begins to change, redouble the stirring, and occasionally remove the stewpan from the fire for a few minutes altogether, in order that the flour should not be fried too quickly, for this is really all that is being done. It will be found that the butter and flour will go on boiling in the stewpan for a long time after it has been removed from the fire--ten minutes or more: such is the power enamelled stewpans possess of retaining the heat. Have ready, close at hand, two slices out of the centre of a good-sized onion about a quarter of an inch thick. Keep stirring the butter and flour till it is of a light brown colour, not quite so brown as ripe corn, then take the stewpan off the fire, throw in the two slices of onion, which have the double advantage of slackening the heat and of imparting a rich flavour to the thickening. This will cause a great spluttering, and care should be taken to avoid a few little splashes on the backs of the hands. Keep stirring the mixture till all bubbling has ceased, and this will be longer than many would imagine. Pour off what will now be a rich brown fluid, which will assume the appearance of light chocolate when cold, into a deep dish--old marmalade pots are as good as anything--for use. It will keep for months, and is always at hand for thickening gravy. A good-sized table-spoonful of this mixture, which is called, as we said, brown thickening, or brown roux, will, when mixed with half a pint or a little more of good stock, transform it into good rich brown gravy, which only requires a few additions, varying with what the gravy is intended for, to complete it. If the gravy is intended for roast fowls, for instance, a little mushroom ketchup may be added; if for game, such as a pheasant, a dessert-spoonful of sherry. The effect of brown thickening in gravy is that not only is the gravy thickened and the raw flavour inseparable from butter and flour avoided, but the important element--colour--is introduced or assisted. You may use half a dozen pounds of meat in making gravy, but if it comes up pale and thin, it will be thought poor. The better the cooks the better do they understand the importance of appearances. Good thick mock-turtle soup owes its rich colour to this thickening, and it is because brown thickening is so rarely made, or the use of it so little understood in private houses, that home-made thick mock-turtle is so invariably poor, although the amount of real calf's head--and not pig's head--used in its preparation is probably double that used in any ordinary pastry-cook's. One great advantage of having brown thickening is, that it is possible to make enough at once to last a couple of months. Gravy is constantly being wanted; and in the end the cook will find time saved by having the thickening at hand ready made, instead of the plate, the dab of butter, the mixing, the uncertainty as to quantity, etc., which is her usual wont in melting a little butter and flour fresh for each occasion. As, however, we are on the subject of thickening, by means of brown roux, soups, such as mock-turtle, gravies, etc., it may occur to some to inquire--How would you thicken white soup, such as Palestine soup, oyster soup, etc.; or, How would you thicken cheap bechamel sauce where no cream is used? Our answer is--By using white roux instead of brown. But then white roux or white thickening is not necessarily butter and flour just melted together, which, as we have said, has a tendency to give whatever is thickened a raw and gruelly flavour: The cook will have observed in making the brown thickening what a long time it took before it began to turn colour--in fact, her patience the first time was probably nearly exhausted, and she would very likely confess afterwards, flushed with triumph, that she began to think the "stuff" would never turn colour at all. White roux is simply, to use an Irish expression, brown thickening just before it gets brown; or, in other words, the grains of raw flour are cooked, but not coloured. Now, it is evident that brown thickening is of no use when the substance thickened is required to be clear or bright. Brown gravy and thick mock-turtle soup are what may be called--i.e. they do not pretend to be bright. There are, however, sauces, and even gravies, that should be thick, and at the same time bright and clear. Here, then, it is apparent that we must have some other thickening altogether. We will take as a specimen that exceedingly nice-looking, and at the same time nice-tasting, sauce, called sauce Bordelaise, made from claret; and as of course any ordinary sound claret will do for the purpose, in the present day of cheap French wine the sauce is by no means so dear as it would have been some years ago.

To make Bordelaise sauce, you must first have some very good stock, perfectly bright and absolutely free from fat. Take, say, half a pint of such stock, and boil it down in a small saucepan, in which has been placed one bead of garlic and a very little piece of mace and cinnamon, with just a suspicion of cayenne pepper. When the stock, by means of being gently boiled, has evaporated away till there is only one-third of it left, strain it very carefully off, and mix it with nearly a tumblerful of claret, and warm it up. It will, of course, be quite thin. Next take a little arrowroot, and mix it with a table-spoonful of cold water in a cup; stir it, and mix it in gradually with the sauce, which must be just simmering on the fire. As soon as the sauce gets as thick as prepared gum or very thin treacle, it is done. The sauce should, however, be as bright as claret itself. This sauce does for a variety of purposes, such as sweetbreads, boiled fish, or even cold meat may be cut in slices and warmed up in it. The advantage of arrowroot as a thickening is very marked in this sauce, as the brightness of the colour is not in the least destroyed, and the exact consistency liked can easily be obtained by simply adding a little at a time, and keeping the sauce well stirred and simmering. Recollect, however, in using arrowroot as a means of thickening, always to mix it with cold water in a cup, and stir it up before taking any out, or the arrowroot will settle and cake at the bottom of the cup. Arrowroot is the best thickening when clearness is desirable; there are many kinds of gravies, however, which are necessarily clear, and yet which are ill-adapted to bear brown thickening. The gravy for ordinary hashed mutton is one. Colour can be imparted by browning a little sliced onion with a little butter in a frying-pan, or by means of burnt brown sugar and water, or toasted bread. This gravy is best thickened with corn-flour or arrowroot, as mutton previously cooked is not savoury enough to bear the rich flavouring of brown thickening like roast goose, or duck, or fowl. Colouring from sugar is made by simply melting some coarse brown sugar in an old frying-pan till it looks like blood, and then pouring some boiling water on it, and stirring it till it is dissolved.

Colouring-balls for soups, gravies, etc., are sold in bottles, and are made in France from vegetables, but they vary considerably, and sometimes impart by no means an agreeable flavour to the soup or gravy. Used with caution, however, they are at times very valuable, as a little piece will go a long way; but I will defer going into the question of colouring soups until we enlarge on that most important branch of cooking--viz. letting stock colour itself, by being reduced to a glaze in the making, which is far preferable to any artificial means.

There is one most important point which the cook should always bear in mind when brown thickening is used for either soup or gravy, and that is, removing the fat or butter which will always rise to the surface of the soup or gravy after boiling. Should this important point be omitted, the gravy or soup ladle might possibly have a film of fat hanging from it similar to what we have already described as happening to the gravy from a roast joint when the cook has been careless in pouring off the grease. After the gravy or soup has been thickened, allow it to boil up, and then stand it on one side of the fire. In a very few minutes a film of grease from the butter in the thickening will make its appearance on the top, and requires removing; this must be repeated several times. The safest method is to allow the gravy or soup to simmer gently, when it will gradually as it is said "throw up the grease." If, then, when the liquid is simmering, it be occasionally skimmed, all fear of greasy gravy or soup is removed. The same process applies in using white thickening. Suppose you have thickened some Palestine soup, which is made from Jerusalem artichokes, allow the thickened soup to boil. The top will have a yellow, oily appearance, owing to the butter in the thickening. This must be skimmed off; but even after all has been skimmed, by allowing the soup to simmer gently some more probably will be thrown up. Some cooks have an idea that if when they have made some soup they allow it to get cold, and then remove all the fat that cakes on the top, it is impossible for there to be any more fat in the soup at all. This is a great fallacy, easily made manifest by allowing the soup, after the fat has been removed, to boil up again. On its getting cold a fresh cake of fat will appear if the soup was at all greasy. Soup made from pig's head will somewhat astonish a young cook on this point. We have already explained that the chief reasons for preferring brown thickening to flour and butter melted together are the appearance and the flavour--i.e. the latter causes the gravy not merely to look gruelly, but to taste so. It will, of course, often happen that, notwithstanding the cook's best endeavours to be prepared for emergencies, at times gravy will be wanted in a hurry, and yet no brown thickening is at hand for the purpose of converting the thin stock into thick gravy. In this case, a small quantity can be easily made in a very short time, which, though not as a rule equal in quality to that made in the way we have described, will at any rate be far preferable to the ordinary plain butter and flour. The method is simply to melt sufficient butter and flour together in a saucer, place the saucer in the oven, and occasionally stir it; the flour soon becomes baked, which avoids the gruelly taste; next, the flour soon becomes of a light fawn colour at the top, and after the saucer has been stirred a few times the whole quantity will assume the colour required. Indeed, some persons make brown thickening in large quantities in a pie-dish, and place it in the oven, taking it out at times, and stirring it. The stewpan is, however, we think, a far preferable method.

We have in speaking of gravies confined our attention almost entirely to the thickening, which, as we have pointed out, is the chief point on which cooks break down. Of course, the exact consistency to which gravy must be brought is another important point which must be left entirely to the cook's judgment. The advantage of having brown thickening ready is that only small quantities need be added at a time. The cook, consequently, has only to exercise a little patience--i.e. to stir the thickening well in, see that it is all dissolved and that the gravy boils gently, to avoid the common but unpardonable fault of having the gravy too thick. Good brown gravy should be of the consistency of cream at the outside, and never thicker--if, indeed, so thick. It would be almost impossible to describe all the various methods of flavouring gravies in order to suit them to the dishes with which they are served, but we may mention here that there is perhaps no method of bringing out and at the same time improving the flavour of good gravy equal to that of adding at the last moment a good slice of raw lean ham; and when we say lean we mean a slice absolutely destitute of fat. Another very good addition to gravy is part of the pulp of a fresh ripe tomato, especially when the gravy is intended for some dish with which tomato sauce would not be inapplicable, such as roast fowl. When a fresh tomato cannot be obtained, a spoonful of tomato sauce will answer just as well. We would, however, particularly caution cooks against the indiscriminate use of Worcester sauce, as this particular sauce is so powerful, that when used for gravy, unless added with the greatest caution, it is apt to overpower the flavour of everything else. Again, the stewpan or small saucepan used for warming up the gravy can be rubbed with a bead of garlic when this somewhat strong flavouring is not objected to.