[Sca-cooks] gravy

[Stefan li Rous]

Adamantius talked a bit about gravy.
> I had an eye round too, but it was massive (purchased by spouse with
> eyes bigger than stomach), and barded, so fat was more in evidence.
We've talked about larding before. What did you use for your fat 
source? bacon?
> You'd be surprised, though, how you can get a sort of characteristic
> eye-round gravy from that cut, even if there isn't enough fat to do
> the roux thing.
  <snip of useful info on stretching the meat drippings a bit to make 
gravy>
> I have learned from limited, but highly effective, experience, that
> there seems to be no good commercially prepared gravy.
The folks at Cook's Illustrated prefer home made gravy, but they 
concede that sometimes the can version is what has to be used. In these 
case they recommend the chicken gravy, even in meat dishes. Their taste 
tests showed it to be a better product. They think it is because the 
chicken gravy is required by law to have a higher real chicken content 
than the beef gravies are required to have of real beef stuff.

Recently you commented on the Europeans considering gravy to include 
just the drippings and not necessarily creating a roux, where the 
Americans consider a rouz necessary to call it a gravy. But when we 
were looking for examples of period gravy, I thought it was specifially 
the use of a rouz that we were using as our gravy definition. What we 
did find was late period, if I remember correctly. So, do we have 
examples of earlier gravy, but not a roux based gravy?
> It all sounds lovely! Hmmm. Leftover roast beef with sour cream
> horseradish...
This sounds good. This may be closer to the commercial horseradish 
sauces I've had. Are you just mixing chopped horseradish and some sour 
cream together? Or are you pulverizing it together in a food processor? 
This sounds like it would be a great baked potato topping. (sigh. more 
carbs. But it might make a good hamburger topping, too)

Stefan
--------
THLord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
    Mark S. Harris           Austin, Texas          
StefanliRous at austin.rr.com
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****