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Roast Beef Sauce
Remove roast from pan, and pour off all the fat except one good tablespoonful.
Add one tablespoon of cornstarch. Put over the fire and cook, stirring constantly till well browned. Add gradually, stirring all the time, one pint of boiling water, and cook till thick and smooth.
All brown gravies may be made from this recipe.
A plain pan gravy built on the browned drippings in the roasting pan. Everything depends on how far you take the roux before the liquid goes in.
- The hinge: brown the starch, don't scorch itStarch taken past a deep tan turns bitter, and there is little margin here. Keep the pan on moderate heat and stir without stopping until it is well browned, as the recipe says.
- Cornstarch thickens differently from flourOne tablespoon of cornstarch to a pint of liquid gives a thin, glossy gravy, and browning it weakens its thickening power further. Cornstarch thickens roughly twice as strongly as flour, so a noticeably thicker, more opaque flour gravy would need about three to four tablespoons to the pint, cooked longer.
- A pintTwo cups. Beef stock in place of the boiling water gives far more flavour, and the recipe takes it without complaint.
- Deglaze firstThe recipe says nothing about the browned bits stuck to the pan. Scrape them off the bottom as the liquid goes in, or set the pan over heat with a splash of stock or wine before adding the starch.
- Boiling water, and whyThe recipe calls for boiling water added gradually with constant stirring. Add it in a thin stream and keep stirring; that is what keeps the sauce smooth.
- SeasoningThe original gives none. Salt and pepper at the end, after the gravy has reduced, since drippings from a salted roast are already seasoned.
- YieldAbout two cups, enough for six to eight servings. It will thicken as it stands and can be loosened with a little more hot stock.
Gravy of this kind is the household economy of the roasting pan made into a sauce: the fat is poured off, the browned residue kept, and a little starch does the work that a long-simmered classical espagnole would do in a professional kitchen. The claim that "All brown gravies may be made from this recipe" is the point of the entry: one all-purpose formula. Cornstarch rather than flour reflects its rise as a domestic thickener after commercial corn starch became widely sold in American groceries in the second half of the nineteenth century, though flour remained the standard thickener for brown gravies.