Saucy ingredients

Gemma Champ

• Last Updated: November 03. 2009 4:19PM UAE / November 3. 2009 12:19PM GMT

The key to a Sunday roast is gravy. Simon Dean / www.grapheast.com

Everybody thinks they have the perfect gravy down to a science, even the Royal Society of Chemistry, says Gemma Champ

In the thrill of the F1, you may have missed the second most important story of last week: the Royal Society of Chemistry’s establishment of the formula for the perfect gravy.

Just as every Lebanese family has its own preferred recipe for tabbouleh and Italians all swear by their mothers’ minestrone soups, the British are obsessed with the correct way to serve a Sunday roast. And the key to a Sunday roast? The gravy. Some use it to hide the evidence of an overcooked joint of beef while others smother their crisp roast potatoes in copious amounts of the meat-juice-based sauce. As for me, I would happily forego the meat, veg and even Yorkshire puddings in favour of a deep bowl of rich, mustard-tinged gravy and some crusty bread.

The problem is, if you submit yourself to anyone else’s gravy recipe you risk a huge disappointment: mean quantities, wrong consistency or, the worst crime of all, ready-made gravy granules. Unforgivable.

Gravy is not just about having a sauce to flavour bland food; it is also about not wasting one iota of the nutrition in the meat and veg you are serving, and this was part of the thinking behind the RSC’s recipe, says its creator, Dr John Emsley.

“You do get a lot of things oozing out of the meat when it’s roasting. You get protein and things like that, and it seems silly just to throw all that away and then turn to a product like gravy granules to make your gravy,” he explains. “We’re trying to encourage people to put back some of the things that are coming out of the meat into the gravy that you then use for the meal.”

In other words, though it has a reputation abroad as being a particularly unappetising part of Britain’s stodgy, unhealthy culinary tradition, gravy is actually good for you. And, Emsley says, it can be better for you if you use iodised salt.

“When people flavour gravy at the end with salt, I thought it would be rather nice if they started using iodised salt. The UN launched a campaign in 2000 because something like 700 million people suffer iodine deficiency, and if a woman who’s pregnant has got a severe iodine deficiency then of course the baby’s brain won’t develop properly and that’s a permanent stigma for the rest of its life because it will be born with a low IQ. I just thought I could tag that message onto the gravy message.”

Well, that’s all very worthy, but for most gravy buffs, the health aspects are merely the cherry on top of a meaty cake. The real question is: how good does it taste? The answer, unfortunately, is as imprecise as the science is exact. Emsley admits that the flavour is simply one that he and his family consider perfect, and the method of making a roux with the meat juices and some plain flour, then adding vegetable water, iodised salt and a dash of soy sauce is, according to the many outraged comments on the blogosphere, an age-old recipe that everyone’s mother has been using for donkey’s years.

“You can make all types of gravy,” he says. “If you go to Mrs Beeton’s cookery book of 150 years ago she talks about onion gravy, and this gravy and that gravy, where you just add more herbs. But the way my daughter and my wife do it can’t be bettered.”

Indeed, for me, it’s not a gravy without some Dijon mustard to pep it up, a splash of Worcestershire sauce and a tiny drop of gravy browning – the way my father has made it since time immemorial.

Of course, there are the variables that can’t be controlled: how much meat juice does the joint produce, for example? When I tried the Emsley method, the rib of beef I used held on to its juices with every fibre of its being, meaning that the resulting gravy had barely any meat flavour. With such a mean base, the seasoning flavours, the soy sauce and the iodised salt conspired to make a rather briny concoction, rescued only by the timely addition of lots of stock, a little apple vinegar, some mustard and tomato purée.

What this points to is that, molecular gastronomy aside, cooking can never be an exact science, and the only thing to do is taste, taste, taste. Chris Lester, the executive chef at the Rivington Grill, the British restaurant in Souk Al Bahar, has wise advice on this point: “Take a little bit of time, get your flavours and taste it. You can always add more flavour but it’s very difficult to take away.” Too true, and it pays to take heed of his views on the cabbage water, salt and soy sauce aspects of the RSC recipe.

“If you’re cooking up sprouts or cabbage, be careful because the liquid is very strong and pungent. You have to do it in moderation. You’ve got to be careful with soy, too, because it can be quite strong. You’ve got to use good quality. Add a little bit of soy, but it can be slightly salty, so you’ve got to take that into consideration. How’s it going to change the characteristics of the sauce? Add it earlier on, cook it out a little bit.”

There is one thing on which he and Emsley agree: gravy has to be home-made.

“I must have used 10 different recipes in the places I’ve worked at, with all the chefs around the world,” Lester says. “But at the end of the day I think my mum’s got the best recipe.”