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Roast Meat, Gravy For
When the meat is done, lay that end which is least done in a clean hot dish before the fire then pour all the fat out of your dripping-pan through a hair sieve into a stone jar, and put it away; then wipe out of the pan any dust or cinders that may be in it with a clean dish cloth, and for a joint of about ten pounds pour a small-sized cupful of boiling stock made from trimmings into the dripping-pan, and with this stock and your basting-ladle rub all the baked brown gravy off the pan--for nearly all the real gravy which drops from the meat will be baked to the dripping-pan. When you have rubbed and washed all the brown off the pan, mix it well together, and strain it through a fine hair sieve into a butter saucepan, simmer it gently over the fire till it is quite hot but not to boil, pour it over the meat, and serve it up. You will find it a good nice brown gravy, better than is frequently made with half a pound of gravy-beef.
ROAST MEAT, GRAVY FOR (another way). (See GRAVY FOR ROAST MEAT.)
This is deglazing, described before the word was in common English use: the roasting juices caramelised onto the pan are the whole point, and the small quantity of stock is only there to lift them off. It produces a thin, glossy jus rather than a thickened flour gravy.
- The hingeEverything depends on scrubbing the baked-brown residue off the pan while it is still hot, and on pouring off the fat first so it does not re-emulsify into the liquid. Once the pan cools the fond is much harder to lift, which is why the recipe calls for the stock to be boiling.
- Dripping-panYour roasting tin. If it is flameproof metal, set it directly over a low burner while you work the stock around with a spoon; the original expects the residual heat of the pan alone to do it.
- A small-sized cupfulNo volume is given; something in the region of a modern half-cup to three-quarters of a cup for a 10 lb joint. The measure is genuinely loose; add more stock only if the pan is very large, since the yield here is a sauce to spoon over slices, not a jug of gravy.
- Hair sieveA sieve of woven horsehair, once standard for straining. Any fine-mesh strainer does the same job; strain twice if the pan has thrown up much sediment.
- Butter saucepanA small saucepan, so called because it was the pan kept for melted-butter sauces. Anything holding a pint will do.
- "Quite hot but not to boil"Sound advice for a reason the book does not give: boiling drives off the volatile roast aromas and can make the sauce taste flat and salty as it reduces. Bring it just to steaming and serve at once.
- The reserved fatThe dripping poured into the stone jar was a valued cooking fat. Refrigerate it in a covered container rather than a larder crock, and use it within a few weeks.
- Resting the jointThe meat is set "before the fire" to stay hot, and to bring on the end which is least done, while the gravy is made; loosely cover it while you work, and add any juices it releases to the sauce at the end.
- YieldOnly a small quantity, little more than the cupful of stock you started with. Serve it over the carved meat rather than in a boat, as there is not much of it.
Cassell's is arguing a point here: that the best gravy costs nothing. Mid- and late-Victorian kitchens are often said to have made gravy by stewing down half a pound of "gravy-beef" — cheap shin or leg bought specifically to be boiled for its juices — and the writer is pointing out, correctly, that the fond glazed onto the roasting tin is the same substance already paid for. The distinction between this kind of pan sauce and the flour-thickened brown gravy of the English Sunday table hardened over the nineteenth century, with French-trained cooks such as Soyer pushing the deglazed jus and household manuals continuing to teach the thickened version. The cross-reference at the end, to a second method under GRAVY FOR ROAST MEAT, is characteristic of the Dictionary, which was assembled alphabetically from many hands and frequently carries two or three competing answers to the same question.