The World's Oldest Gravy Recipe

Long before cooks wrote recipes down, meat was almost certainly served with its cooking juices, and broths were made wherever animals were boiled or roasted. The English gravee recorded around 1300 is important for a narrower reason: it is among the earliest surviving recipes explicitly identified as gravy. It was not the brown, flour-thickened sauce associated with a modern British roast, but a pale, aromatic sauce built from broth and ground almonds.

The recipe belongs to the wealthy medieval kitchen, where a chicken or rabbit might be served with a carefully prepared sauce containing ingredients traded across Europe and Asia. Its combination of savoury stock, sweetening and expensive spice can seem peculiar to modern taste. In its own period, it was an entirely respectable way to turn a plain meat broth into something rich enough for the high table.

The recipe in its historical setting¶

An English culinary tradition dating from around 1300 preserves instructions for a gravee made with the broth of a hen, ground almonds, mace, cubeb pepper and sugar. The sauce was associated with cooked chicken or rabbit, and would have been prepared in a household with access to a substantial kitchen, a mortar and pestle, and a reasonably well-stocked larder.

This was not everyday peasant cookery. Almonds had to be imported or transported over considerable distances, while mace and cubeb were luxury spices. Sugar was also expensive and was used as a seasoning and preservative rather than as a bulk sweetener. The presence of all three says more about the social setting of the dish than about an alleged medieval fondness for making every savoury course sweet.

The wider period was one in which sauces helped distinguish a formal dish from boiled or roasted meat alone. Medieval cooks used bread, egg yolks, almonds, wine, vinegar, herbs and spices to alter the body and flavour of a stock. The recipe therefore sits within the history of Medieval sauces, rather than being an isolated ancestor of the Sunday roast jug.

What gravee meant¶

In this context, gravee meant a sauce or gravy made from the broth and juices associated with cooked meat. The spelling was not fixed: medieval manuscripts vary considerably, and words corresponding to gravy, grave, gravee and related forms appear in different forms and contexts. Origins of the word “gravy” is consequently a matter of linguistic history rather than a single clean act of invention.

The medieval word did not necessarily imply a dark sauce, nor did it require flour. A gravee could be pale, smooth and thickened with ground almonds. Its identity lay in its relationship to the meat and its broth, not in the colour or in the method familiar from modern roast gravy.

Ingredients and preparation¶

The principal liquid was a clear or lightly clouded chicken broth. Ground almonds supplied both thickness and richness. Mace — the dried outer covering of the nutmeg seed — gave a warm, floral spice, while cubeb pepper contributed a sharper, resinous pepperiness than ordinary black pepper. Sugar rounded the sauce and balanced the aromatics.

A cook would probably have ground the almonds with some of the broth, then added the mixture to more hot broth and strained it, producing a fine sauce. The cooked chicken or rabbit could be served beneath or beside it, with the gravee poured over the meat. The result was closer to an almond-enriched velouté than to a modern pan gravy, although the French comparison should not be taken to mean that medieval cooks were following the later codified Velouté system.

A modernised medieval gravee¶

Serves 4 · about 35 minutes, plus cooking the meat

You need

• 500 ml light chicken stock, preferably unsalted
• 50 g ground almonds
• ¼ tsp ground mace
• ¼ tsp freshly ground black pepper, or a small pinch of ground cubeb if available
• 1 tsp caster sugar, or less to taste
• 1 tbsp cold water
• 500–600 g cooked chicken or rabbit, sliced or jointed
• Salt, used cautiously

Method

1. Put the stock in a saucepan and bring it to a gentle simmer. Do not allow it to boil hard, which can make a small quantity of stock taste harsh.
2. Mix the ground almonds with the cold water to form a smooth paste. Whisk the paste gradually into the hot stock.
3. Add the mace, cubeb or pepper, and sugar. Simmer very gently for 10–12 minutes, stirring frequently, until the almonds have thickened the liquid and their raw taste has gone.
4. For a smoother sauce, pass it through a fine sieve. For a more rustic version, leave the almond particles in place. Taste before adding salt, particularly if the stock was bought ready-made.
5. Warm the cooked chicken or rabbit in the sauce for two or three minutes, or arrange the meat on a dish and pour the gravee over it.

The original would not have been made with supermarket ground almonds, and the flavour of modern stock varies greatly. A homemade Chicken stock gives the most convincing base. Cubeb is available from some specialist spice merchants; black pepper is a practical substitute, though it is not identical.

Flavour, colour and texture¶

The finished gravee would probably have been pale cream or ivory, perhaps with a slightly grey or beige cast from the broth and spices. It would not have the glossy mahogany colour supplied by Gravy browning, deeply roasted meat juices or caramelised onions.

Its texture would be smooth if strained, but more softly grainy than a sauce thickened with refined flour or cornflour. Almonds contribute fat as well as starch-like body, so the sauce would feel rounded and faintly rich rather than gelatinous. The flavour would begin with chicken broth, followed by mace’s warm fragrance, cubeb’s peppery heat and a restrained sweetness. It should not taste like dessert. Excess sugar would make the dish modernly clumsy and historically implausible.

Modern British gravy usually begins with roasting juices, Fond, meat fat and plain flour, or with stock thickened separately. It is commonly dark, savoury and intensely meaty. Medieval gravee used broth rather than necessarily relying on browned roasting residue; it was thickened with almonds rather than a roux; and its spice profile was deliberately more perfumed. The two sauces share a practical purpose — making meat more succulent and the meal more substantial — but they are not the same preparation.

Why almonds, sugar and spice mattered¶

Almonds were valuable but versatile. They could thicken a sauce, add fat in the absence of dairy, and imitate the richness of cream. They were particularly useful during periods or meals when other ingredients were restricted, although this gravee need not be treated as a specifically Lenten dish.

Sugar and imported spices marked status. Mace and cubeb were not sprinkled into a pot because medieval cooks had never encountered salt or herbs; they were used because a wealthy household could afford ingredients that had travelled through long commercial networks. Sweet and aromatic flavours were also normal in elite medieval cookery, where the sharp boundary between sweet and savoury was less fixed than it is in modern British cooking.

Is it really the world’s oldest gravy?¶

Not literally, on the evidence available. Earlier written references to meat sauces, broths and cooking juices may exist in other languages and traditions, while unwritten gravy-like preparations must have preceded all surviving manuscripts. There is no reliable global register of the first sauce that could be translated as gravy.

The defensible claim is narrower: this English gravee is among the earliest surviving recipes specifically identified as gravy, and it is an unusually early example from the British culinary record. “The world’s oldest gravy recipe” is therefore a useful headline, provided it is understood as a shorthand for a much more careful historical distinction. Medieval cooks would probably have considered that distinction less urgent than ensuring the almonds were properly ground.