Most joints will afford sufficient trimmings, &c. to make half a pint of plain gravy, which you may colour with a few drops of [No. 322]: for those that do not, about half an hour before you think the meat will be done, mix a salt-spoonful of salt, with a full quarter pint of boiling water; drop this by degrees on the brown parts of the joint; set a dish under to catch it (the meat will soon brown again); set it by; as it cools, the fat will float on the surface; when the meat is ready, carefully remove the fat, and warm up the gravy, and pour it into the dish.
The common method is, when the meat is in the dish you intend to send it up in, to mix half a tea-spoonful of salt in a quarter pint of boiling water, and to drop some of this over the corners and underside of the meat, and to pour the rest through the hole the spit came out of: some pierce the inferior parts of the joints with a sharp skewer.
The following receipt was given us by a very good cook: You may make good browning for roast meat and poultry, by saving the brown bits of roast meat or broiled; cut them small, put them into a basin, cover them with boiling water, and put them away till next day; then put it into a saucepan, let it boil two or three minutes, strain it through a sieve into a basin, and put it away for use. When you want gravy for roast meat, put two table-spoonfuls into half a pint of boiling water with a little salt: if for roasted veal, put three table-spoonfuls into half a pint of thin melted butter.
N.B. The gravy which comes down in the dish, the cook (if she is a good housewife) will preserve to enrich hashes or little made dishes, &c.
Obs. Some culinary professors, who think nothing can be excellent that is not extravagant, call this “Scots’ gravy;” not, I believe, intending it, as it certainly is, a compliment to the laudable and rational frugality of that intelligent and sober-minded people.
N.B. This gravy should be brought to table in a sauce-boat; preserve the intrinsic gravy which flows from the meat in the Argyll.
Gravy for boiled Meat,—(No. 327.)
May be made with parings and trimmings; or pour from a quarter to half a pint of the liquor in which the meat was boiled, into the dish with it, and pierce the inferior part of the joint with a sharp skewer.
Wow wow Sauce for stewed or bouilli Beef.—(No. 328.)
Chop some parsley-leaves very fine; quarter two or three pickled cucumbers, or walnuts, and divide them into small squares, and set them by ready: put into a saucepan a bit of butter as big as an egg; when it is melted, stir to it a table-spoonful of fine flour, and about half a pint of the broth in which the beef was boiled; add a table-spoonful of vinegar, the like quantity of mushroom catchup, or port wine, or both, and a tea-spoonful of made mustard; let it simmer together till it is as thick as you wish it; put in the parsley and pickles to get warm, and pour it over the beef; or rather send it up in a sauce-tureen.