The encyclopaedia of gravy
The editorial rules behind the site: structure, measurements, sourcing, tone, and how uncertainty is handled.
Structure¶
Every article opens with a lead summary — one or two sentences that answer the question in the title. Someone who reads only that should leave with the right answer.
Type pages follow a fixed structure so they can be compared: what it is · history · typical ingredients · flavour profile · what to serve it with · traditional recipe · quick version · vegetarian and vegan versions · common mistakes · see also.
Section headings use ##, subsections ###. Pages with more than one section get an automatic
contents box.
Measurements¶
Metric first: grams, millilitres, °C. Tablespoons and teaspoons where they are genuinely more useful than weights, which for gravy is often.
American terms are noted where they differ — cornflour/cornstarch, plain flour/all-purpose, biscuits/scones — because half the subject matter is American.
Tone¶
Plain, specific, and confident where confidence is warranted. No mystification, no reverence, and no pretending that gravy granules are a moral failing.
Where a technique is contested — mint sauce in the gravy, gravy on roast potatoes — the article says so and gives both cases rather than pretending there is a settled answer.
Editors may add the odd tongue-in-cheek comment here and there for a bit of a laugh. We ought not take this too seriously.
Uncertainty¶
Food history is full of well-told stories with thin evidence. Gravypedia flags them:
- The Bisto acronym — widely repeated, not firmly documented. See bisto.
- The red-eye gravy / Andrew Jackson story — almost certainly folklore. See red-eye gravy.
- The scribal-error etymology of "gravy" — well supported but not unanimous. See origins of the word gravy.
- The raw potato trick for salty gravy — flatly wrong, and explained as such in fixing gravy that is too salty.
Where the site says something is disputed, that is a statement about the evidence, not a hedge.
Linking¶
Articles link to each other with double brackets: <a class="wikilink" href="/wiki/onion-gravy">onion gravy</a>, or <a class="wikilink" href="/wiki/onion-gravy">a proper
onion gravy</a> to change the visible text. Links to pages that do not yet exist appear in red, which
is how the editors track what still needs writing.
Recipes¶
Every recipe gives a yield, a time, a full ingredient list with quantities, and numbered steps that say why as well as what. Where a step is the one that matters — browning the onions, reducing the wine — the article says so plainly.
Technology¶
The site is based on a custom CMS engine called Gravybase. It is written in Python and uses a SQLite3 storage backend.