Gravy
The claims of Gravy are discussed in the article on Sauces. But a word may here be necessary by way of protest against gravy-which, even when it is good, is not always desirable. French cooks have a diabolical habit of masking all their viands-painting them with glaze, and anointing them with the royal sauces of which they are so proud. They will cover a slice of hot ham with a thick Gravy sauce. Some one has said that hot ham should never be eaten at all; but certainly, if eaten, or if worth eating, it needs no sauce-unless on rare occasions it may be a spoonful of champagne. But to have the slice of good ham covered with a thick sauce, which is partly made from ham, is atrocious. Also, as a rule, it is wickedness to drench roast game with sauce. Sydney Smith says, in describing a dinner at which he was present: "I heard a lady who sat next me say in a low, sweet voice-'No gravy, sir!' I had never seen her before, but I turned suddenly round and said, 'Madam, I have been looking for a person who disliked gravy all my life; let us swear eternal friendship.' She looked astonished, but took the oath, and what is better, kept it."
Its own Gravy. The gravy which is served in England with roast meat is too often a mockery. While the sirloin is turning before the fire, the cook takes a boatful of boiling water, which she colours with caramel and seasons with salt. She pours this gradually over the sirloin, she catches it again in a dish below, takes off the fat; and that is what she calls "its own gravy." There is none of the juice of meat in it save what may afterwards ooze out from the beef when it is placed on the dish and begins to contract by cooling. It is not merely in small and stingy households that this is done. It is common enough in very good houses; and there is probably not a regimental mess in the kingdom that is not served to gravy with the roast joint in the same way. I have seen the cook of a crack regiment take about a gallon of boiling water, and with it water several magnificent roasts, to provide gravy for the most brilliant set of officers in the British service. Beef Gravy-the French Jus de bœuf. - Gravy is the result of two processes of cooking-roasting and boiling. 1. Line the bottom of the saucepan with slices of onion; spread over them a little beef fat; on the top of this lay Gravy about two pounds of gravy beef cut to pieces, and add a gill of water-the beef fat, when melted, making with the water half a pint of liquid. Set the pan on a brisk fire, to boil sharply until the contents are well browned and the liquor reduced to a glaze. Watch carefully during this process, which is really a process of roasting (see Glaze), so that there may be no burning. 2. Then add a quart of boiling water, and leave it for a little, so that the glaze may have time to melt and detach itself from the pan. Afterwards set it on to boil with some salt, skim it carefully, and throw in a carrot, a head of celery, both cut up, a faggot of parsley, a couple of cloves, a blade of mace and a pinch of pepper. Simmer it for two hours, pass it through a tammy, take off the fat, and the result should be about a pint-and-a-half of beef gravy.
Veal Gravy. Take two pounds of the leg, knuckle or neck of veal, free from bone. Put it into a stewpan with a half-pint of water, and reduce it slowly to an amber glaze, from time to time turning the meat and piercing it with a knife, to make the juices flow. This is the roasting process. Then for the boiling or simmering, proceed as for beef gravy, perhaps adding an onion.
Rich Gravy. In the foregoing receipts the process of making gravy ought to be clear, and other gravies from other meats may be made in the same way. A very rich gravy is made by combining beef, veal and ham in the first process of reducing the meat to glaze, and in adding a fowl or part of a fowl to the second process of decoction. Cold Gravies.- All these gravies turn to a savoury jelly, and are excellent with roast meat. But if it should be foreseen that they are required for cold meat, the beef gravy may be stiffened by the rind of bacon or ham, and the veal gravy by a calf's foot. These additions, however, are not to be made until after the first process of roasting the beef or the veal is complete; and they Grill involve the addition of more water for the second or simmering process-say a pint ; as well as longer simmering.
Beneath the polemic are three working recipes for meat gravy in the old sense: not a thickened pan sauce but a concentrated stock built in two stages, browning then simmering. The method still produces one of the best things you can put beside a roast.
- The hinge: reduce to a glaze firstEverything depends on stage one. The meat, fat and small quantity of water must cook down until the liquid has gone entirely and a dark, sticky fond coats the pan bottom. Stop short of that and the finished gravy is pale and thin; take it a minute too far and the burnt sugars turn the whole batch bitter. Stay at the stove for this part.
- Gill and other measuresA gill is 5 fl oz in British usage of the period, near enough to half a cup plus a tablespoon; American gills are 4 fl oz. A quart here is the imperial quart, 40 fl oz. The final yield, "about a pint-and-a-half," is roughly 30 fl oz, or about 850 ml.
- Gravy beefButchers' shorthand for lean, gelatinous stewing beef from the shin or leg. Shin, leg or chuck all work; what matters is connective tissue, which is what gives the cold gravy its jelly.
- Faggot of parsleyA bundle of stalks tied with string, pulled out before straining. A bouquet garni serves the same purpose.
- TammyA fine worsted straining cloth, wrung between two people to force the liquid through. A fine sieve lined with damp muslin does the job with less drama.
- Blade of maceThe dried aril of nutmeg, sold whole in blades or ground. One blade is about a quarter teaspoon of ground mace; add ground mace late, as it goes dusty over two hours of simmering.
- Skimming and defattingThe instruction to "take off the fat" at the end is easiest done cold. Chill the strained gravy overnight and lift the set cap of fat off in one piece; the jelly beneath is what the author means by cold gravy.
- Bacon rind and calf's footBoth are added purely for gelatine, to firm the jelly for serving with cold meat. Pork rind or a split pig's trotter is the modern equivalent; a calf's foot needs ordering ahead. The extra pint of water and longer simmer are needed to extract it.
- ServingAbout 30 fl oz serves eight to ten alongside a roast. It freezes well in small portions and reduces further into a glaze for finishing sauces.
Kettner's Book of the Table (1877) was written by the journalist E. S. Dallas and published under the name of Auguste Kettner, the Soho restaurateur whose establishment lent the book its authority. The bad temper on display here is characteristic: Dallas wrote as a critic of dining as much as a compiler of receipts, and the running quarrel with French practice, with masking, glazing and drowning good meat in sauce, belongs to a long Victorian argument about whether English cooking should follow Carême and his successors. The Sydney Smith anecdote, from the wit and clergyman who died in 1845, was already a well-worn dinner-table story by the time it was printed here. The complaint about "its own gravy" is the sharpest thing on the page and still true: coloured water poured over a joint and caught in the dripping pan is not jus, and the two-stage method that follows, brown hard, then draw out slowly, is essentially how a professional kitchen still makes stock.