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Gravy for Roast Meat
When the drippings from the roast are smoking hot, stir in one tablespoon of flour, and cook well. Then add one cup of boiling water, mash all the lumps, and season to taste with salt and pepper. If liked, a spoon or two of catsup may be added, or a flavoring of worcestershire or other sauce.
A one-cup pan gravy built in the roasting tin, with the ratio implied rather than stated. The whole thing turns on how much fat you leave behind and how long the flour cooks.
- Fat quantityThe recipe never says how much dripping to leave; a tablespoon of flour conventionally takes about a tablespoon of fat. Pour off the excess so only a thin film and the browned juices remain, then measure the fat back in if you are unsure.
- "Cook well"This is the hinge. The roux needs a full minute or two of constant stirring over medium heat until it smells nutty and turns the colour of light toast, or the finished gravy tastes of raw flour.
- Boiling waterAdding boiling rather than cold liquid keeps the roux from seizing into lumps. Stock or the strained pan juices will do more for the flavour than plain water.
- Lumps"Mash all the lumps" means a flat whisk or the back of a wooden spoon worked into the corners of the pan. Add the water in a thin stream at first rather than all at once and there will be very little to mash.
- Scraping the panNot mentioned, but assumed: the browned residue stuck to the roasting tin is most of the flavour. Loosen it while the liquid comes up to a simmer.
- CatsupBottled catsup of the period was often thinner and sharper than the modern bottle, and the word could still cover mushroom or walnut catsups as well as tomato. Use modern ketchup sparingly against the recipe's "spoon or two"; a splash of Worcestershire is the safer of the two options given.
- Consistency and yieldOne tablespoon of flour to one cup of liquid gives a thin, pourable gravy rather than a coating one. The recipe gives no number of servings; double both flour and liquid for a larger roast, keeping the ratio.
Pan gravy of this kind is the oldest and plainest use of a roasting tin: fat, flour, liquid, in that order, a technique long familiar to English cooks and related to what the French call a roux. The Butterick Publishing Company, better known for dress patterns and The Delineator, issued cook books as part of a broader line of domestic manuals aimed at the middle-class housekeeper, and the entry's brevity reflects that audience cno cook who had ever roasted a joint needed to be told more. What the optional finishes reveal is the period's commercial pantry: bottled catsup and Worcestershire had become cheap and ubiquitous by the turn of the century, and recipes of this era seem often to have offered them as a shortcut to depth that a long-simmered stock would otherwise supply.