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Nut Tomato Gravy
1/4 cup strained tomato 1 3/4 cups water 1 tablespoon peanut butter 2 tablespoons white flour 1 tablespoon browned flour 1 teaspoon salt Dissolve the nut butter in the water, add the tomato and salt, and heat to boiling. Stir in the two kinds of flour, which have been mixed and stirred smooth with a little cold water. Cook till thickened.
A quick flour-thickened gravy built on peanut butter instead of meat drippings, of the sort that served vegetarian households in place of pan gravy. It comes together in under ten minutes and needs no fat.
- Browned flourThis is plain flour toasted dry in a skillet over medium heat, stirred constantly until it is the color of a hazelnut shell, roughly 5-8 minutes. It supplies the color and roasted flavor that drippings would otherwise give; it has little thickening power left, which is why plain white flour is used alongside it.
- Strained tomatoIn this period the phrase means fresh or canned tomatoes cooked and pressed through a sieve to remove skin and seed - closest today to passata or a smooth tomato puree, not concentrated tomato paste. A quarter cup of paste would overwhelm the peanut butter.
- Peanut butterUse unsweetened, unhydrogenated peanut butter, ideally the kind that separates. Modern stabilized brands contain sugar and palm oil and will make the gravy faintly sweet and slick. Whisk it into a few tablespoons of the water first to break it up, then add the rest.
- The hingeSlurry both flours smooth in cold water before they go anywhere near the hot pan. Dropped in dry they will seize into lumps that no amount of beating will fully clear.
- Cooking time"Cook till thickened" understates it. Give the gravy a full 4-5 minutes at a bare simmer after it thickens, stirring, or the raw white flour will taste pasty. The browned flour is already cooked and contributes no rawness.
- SaltA teaspoon in two cups of gravy is on the high side by current taste, particularly if the peanut butter is salted. Start with half and correct at the end.
- YieldMakes about 2 cups, enough to sauce four servings of rice, potatoes, or a nut loaf. It thickens further as it cools; thin with hot water when reheating.
This belongs to the vegetarian cookery that grew out of the American health-reform movement of the late nineteenth century, in which nut butters were promoted as a substitute for animal fat. Peanut butter was a relatively new commercial product in that period, and in books of this kind it is used structurally - as the fat and body of a sauce - rather than as a spread. Browned flour is older, a long-standing trick for giving colour and depth to a gravy.