The encyclopaedia of gravy
The Fence Gate Inn in Lancashire served a meat pie valued at £8,195 in 2005. Its gravy was made with two bottles of 1982 Château Mouton Rothschild, costing around £1,000 each at the time.
The most expensive meat pie was served at the Fence Gate Inn in Lancashire in 2005, valued at £8,195. It was made for eight diners and built from luxury ingredients throughout.
The detail that earns it a place on Gravypedia is the gravy: it was made using two bottles of 1982 Château Mouton Rothschild, a wine costing around £1,000 a bottle at the time. That is roughly £2,000 of gravy, before anything else went into the dish.
Is that a waste of good wine?¶
This site's position on wine in gravy is that you should cook with something you would drink, because a thin wine reduces to a thin flavour — see red wine in gravy. Two thousand pounds of first-growth claret is an enthusiastic reading of that principle.
The honest culinary answer is that reduction flattens the distinctions that make a great wine great. Deglazing and reducing drives off the alcohol and concentrates acid, tannin and fruit; the aromatic subtlety that separates a 1982 Mouton Rothschild from a decent £12 bottle is largely lost in the process. A very good wine makes a very good gravy. A legendary one makes the same very good gravy, at considerable expense.
Which is, presumably, the point of a record attempt.
Pie gravy, generally¶
The structural lesson from gravy for pies applies at any price: a pie needs two gravies — a thick one inside to hold the filling when it is cut, and a thinner one beside it to pour. Getting them the wrong way round is a more common fault than under-spending on the wine.
Source¶
- Most expensive meat pie — Guinness World Records