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Made Gravy
281. Made Gravy, fit for ordinary purposes, such as roast poultry or game, as served in everyday dinners, may be made so that it will keep a week in moderately cool weather as follows:-Cut lean beef thin, put it into a frying-pan without any butter, and set it on a fire covered, but take care it does not burn; let it stay till all the gravy that comes out of the meat is dried up into it again; put as much water as will cover the meat, and let that stew away. Then put to meat a small quantity of water, herbs, onions, spice, and a bit of lean ham; simmer till it is rich, and keep it in a cool place. Do not take off the fat till going to be used.
Another. Take any bones or meat in the house, and put in a stewpan with onions, parsley, and sweet herbs. Let it stew well, and thicken it with flour and butter, mixed up; then pass it through a sieve, and add soy, ketchup, Reading or Worcestershire sauce, portwine, a little pounded mace, and cayenne, to the taste, with a little
Two versions of the same everyday brown gravy: one built from fresh lean beef, one from whatever bones and trimmings the kitchen had. Both rely on browning a meat glaze in a dry pan before any liquid goes in, which is where all the colour and depth comes from.
- The hinge: dry the meat down twice"Let it stay till all the gravy that comes out of the meat is dried up into it again" means simmering the beef in its own juices until they reduce to a sticky brown glaze on the pan, then repeating with water. Rush this and the gravy is pale and thin; the browning is doing the work butter or stock cubes would do now.
- Do not let it catchA covered dry pan over direct heat scorches quickly, and a burnt glaze turns the whole batch bitter with no way back. Medium-low heat and an occasional look inside; a heavy pan helps more than a lid does.
- Keeping it a weekThe original relies on a cold larder and a sealing cap of fat. Treat that as obsolete: refrigerate within two hours and use within three or four days, or freeze in portions. The fat cap is still worth leaving in place until serving, but as flavour and moisture, not as a preservative.
- Stewpan and sieveA stewpan is simply a wide, straight-sided saucepan with a lid. Passing through a sieve means pressing the solids to extract everything, then discarding them; a fine mesh sieve gives a cleaner gravy than a colander.
- Flour and butter, mixed upFlour and butter, mixed up â This is beurre manié: equal weights of soft butter and plain flour kneaded to a paste, then whisked into the simmering liquid in small pieces. The recipe gives no quantities; roughly 1 oz of each will lightly thicken a pint of gravy, and more will be needed for a coating consistency.
- The bottled saucesThe bottled sauces — "Ketchup" here is most likely mushroom or walnut ketchup, thin, dark and salty, nothing like tomato ketchup; a splash of mushroom ketchup or a teaspoon of soy plus a little Worcestershire covers it. Reading sauce, a commercial bottling of the period reputedly based on anchovies and spices, is no longer to be found in shops, and Worcestershire is the usual substitute.
- Pounded mace and cayennePounded mace and cayenne — Pounded mace is blade mace crushed to powder; ground mace from a jar works, but use a pinch, as it dominates fast. Add the cayenne, port and sauces at the end, off the boil, and taste as you go — the gravy will have concentrated more than you expect.
- YieldYield — Neither version gives quantities, so any yield is guesswork. A pound of lean beef, or the bones from one roast, with an onion, a bit of ham and herbs, might give something in the region of a pint of finished gravy.