Gravy is the cooked juice of meat, or a mixture of it with water, thickened with flour.

The term " sauces " is often supposed to include only certain preparations of fruit, like apple-sauce, cranberry-sauce, etc.; or mixtures of butter, sugar, etc., eaten with puddings ; but anything eaten with food to improve its relish may be called a sauce. Gravies are sauces, but not all sauces are gravies.

Gravies are made with meat juice or broth, and may be either light or dark. Sauces are made with meat juice or broth, water, milk, cream, or fruit juice, or mixtures of two or more of these materials. We are to learn to-day only about those which are used with meats.

The consistency of gravies and sauces may be varied by using more or less flour in proportion to the liquid.

The simplest way of making a thickening for gravy or sauces was explained in the third lesson; but when butter or fat is also to be used, it is better to make it according to the direction for tomato sauce, using the onion or not as preferred.

Cooking the flour in the hot butter or fat cooks it thoroughly; for the fat, when it stops bubbling, is much hotter than boiling water. When done in this way the flour never has a raw, uncooked taste, and the butter or fat is absorbed by the flour instead of floating on the surface of the gravy.

When a brown sauce is desired, heat the butter and flour together long enough to have them turn brown, before adding the liquid. The fat browned alone will burn easily, and the flour browned alone in the oven, as many writers - not cooks - recommend, will be baked so hard that it will only color the gravy, not swell and thicken it.

In making a white sauce, be careful to cook the flour in the hot butter, without browning them; and at all times add the liquid hot, that it may boil quickly and cause the starch in the flour to swell and burst; and gradually, that the sauce may be stirred, while it is like a thick paste, until it is smooth. If all the liquid be poured on at once, or the mixture be not stirred thoroughly while it is thick, the sauce will be lumpy. Enough liquid must be used to swell all the flour, and make the sauce of the desired consistency. The usual proportion is one tablespoonful of fat and one rounded or two level table-spoonfuls of Hour to one cup of liquid; and by varying these proportions, and using different liquids and seasonings, a great variety of gravies and sauces may be made from this general rule as the foundation.