[Sca-cooks] gravy

[Phil Troy/ G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach ranvaig at columbus.rr.com:
>>I wonder if Ranvaig's recollection of a creamy gravy might have 
>>involved coffee to some extent, but between the ham drippings 
>>(which are generally more than simply grease, I would have thought) 
>>and the cream or milk, somewhat disguised.
>
>Absolutely not, there was never, ever any coffee in my mom's RE 
>gravy.  My husband who IS a coffee drinker also says that Red Eye 
>doesn't have coffee... not just sometimes, but never heard of it 
>that way. The name Red eye comes because you use the marrow from the 
>ham steak.  Not arguing, just reporting what I remember.

Okay. It was worth a shot. Often people remember foods from childhood 
without having any clear idea of how they were prepared, and your 
description had not really established that this was not the case 
here. I thought there was at least a possibility that you had simply 
made the assumption that there was no coffee in it, because, given 
the nature of the other ingredients, it might not be overpoweringly 
obvious. I mean, if one starts with the ingredients to make a nice, 
sweet cream gravy, ham pan juices and coffee will do roughly similar 
things to it when added: darken it somewhat and give it, among other 
flavors, possibly a slight bitterness, so if both were in there, it 
might be hard to tell for some people.

Just as a way of putting this in perspective, I note that when you do 
a Google search for "redeye gravy recipe" (I didn't use quotes in the 
search), the first ten hits come up as recipes calling for coffee, 
and of those ten, only the fifth in whatever order they use, 
mentioned coffee as optional. None simply failed to mention it, but I 
didn't check all 479 hits.  While that doesn't discount your 
experience, it does suggest that many people would disagree about the 
coffee. I assume it's just a regional difference, and probably more 
Southerners feel compelled to put up or contribute to websites 
devoted to redeye gravy, over Midwesterners. ;-)

I question the story about the ham marrow, though, for one simple 
reason (I don't doubt that this view is held, I just question that it 
is part of the original reason for the name): if you have a country 
ham that you have hanging somewhere, eating in fried slices over a 
winter or some such, I don't think you're likely to bother to saw 
through the bone for each slice. Now, I could be wrong here, but I'm 
seeing in my mind half-circles of boneless meat as being the standard 
fried-country-ham-with-redeye-gravy.

Maybe some of the people who grew up with this stuff could address 
that, though. I'm not really qualified: around here fried ham tends 
to be gravyless.

Adamantius