Biscuits and Gravy

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Biscuits and gravy is a regional breakfast dish of the American South. It consists of American biscuits, smothered with white gravy made from sausage or bacon drippings.

This dish is so simple and hearty. It’s fits the definition of a comfort food.

History

This dish emerged from the American Revolutionary War, when food was in short supply. As a wartime dish conceived out of necessity, it uses readily available and and cheap ingredients:

  • flour
  • butter
  • milk
  • pork sausage

This dish’s simple and easy to source ingredients has contributed to its longevity. In particular, pork sausage is often made with trimmings and less-desirable cuts of meats.

Ration-Recipes

I’m very partial to ration-recipes, recipes that are conceived under constraints and limited supplies or ingredients. It doesn’t mean that it’s automatically a bad recipe, just that it’s inherently frugal and simple in its approach.

During a rationing period, you’re going through wartime or famine conditions and you’re focused on keeping fed and keeping morale up. I can see the mindset in this time period as:

  • no one wants to spend 8 hours in the kitchen, there are more important things to be done. During wartime, this means helping out with the war effort in the factories because a significant portion of the workforce is now serving in the military. Or it’s a famine and getting any food into stomachs is top priority, not spending 8 hours to squeeze out some flavour.
  • don’t expect to be cooking with ingredients that can only be sourced from a single farm in France.
  • we’re not desperate enough to eat unsalted, boiled potatoes. People are still striving to make the delicious food and it can be a small comfort

The recipes that survive to present-day are clearly delicious and have widespread appeal. They’re going to be inherently cheap and easy to make, especially during non-rationing periods. It’s the opposite of haute cuisine.

Biscuits

The biscuits are flaky and buttery. They provide texture and a medium to sop up the rich gravy. It’s a quick preparation that can be made daily.

See this recipe for how to make a simple cream biscuit.

Gravy

The gravy is a thick sauce, that is flavoured with all the spices used to make the sausage. When cooking sausage, a lot of fat is rendered out. Many dishes will discard excess fat but this is a recipe that makes complete use. There’s really no such thing as too much fat because that just means more gravy.

To make the gravy:

  1. Brown the sausage
  2. Add flour to the drippings to make a roux. The flour only needs to be cooked off, it doesn’t need that much browning.
  3. Add milk to make the gravy