this post was submitted on 25 Aug 2025
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It’s not just a language barrier, it’s also a cultural barrier. I can imagine someone being confused by this even if they speak fluent English, as the dish ‘biscuits and gravy’ contains neither biscuits nor gravy.
Why does white/sausage gravy not count as gravy, in your view?
Why don’t apples count as pears? Why does black not count as white?
This is gravy
This is what biscuits look like
The stuff you refer to is a ragout, not a gravy.
Um, no. White gravies are a strong part of culinary traditions across Europe as a whole. The lumberjacks in Appalachia didn't just decide one day to make biscuits and "ragu" out of nowhere, they had several sources of inspiration for why they made their gravy the way they did.
And, yes, according to basically every culinary school everywhere, ever - the referent sauce is a gravy, not a ragu/ragout as you attempt to imply here. The sauce is far, far too fucking fatty to be a ragu. It is literally made with meat drippings and is primarily composed of sausage fat and roux. The fact that milk is added as a binder/emulsifier + flavor-enhancer doesn't suddenly turn it into a fucking "ragu". Further, even if gravy was the wrong term for this sauce, the correct one certainly isn't a ragu. This is much closer to a velouté and that family of sauces than it is to ragu and other meat sauces. Except, this isn't velouté, either. Why? BECAUSE THE SAUCE IS MOSTLY MADE OF FAT SOURCED FROM DRIPPINGS, THE FUCKING DICTIONARY DEFINITION OF A GRAVY!!!
Have you never had southern American style biscuits and gravy before?
I just can't seem to imagine how someone would think the gravy is a ragu instead of being a gravy unless you've literally never eaten it before and only have seen it visually and know that it is a sauce with meat in it... this whole position is patently fucking ridiculous if you've ever eaten it before, imo.
You can be Western European, pompous, or correct - pick two.
Sorry not to be a dick I just gotta raz you guys when I get the chance lmao, much love from across the seas. This is definitely an interesting hill you've picked to die upon in a thread topically about language barriers, tho, lol.
Just in case anyone wants to argue with you, here's the tasting history guy backing you up:
https://www.tastinghistory.com/recipes/biscuitsandgravy
Sorry but that is a ridiculous source, they forgot to add yeast to their yeast dough and just went with it. If they dont care about doing things the way they believe it tastes best, why bother with recipes at all?
Why are so many people so pompous about cooking? Making a mistake and running with it is how most recipes were invented in the first place. If you're only ever cooking by numbers then you've got no ground to stand on to be critiquing cooking.
And on that note, this attitude is what puts me off of so many cooking shows.
There are many aspects to that question, I could for example say that what hundreds of people eat in a restaurant in a week has to be of consistent quality and perfectly hygienic. I could talk about how knowing when to add salt to a dish makes the difference between stale or juicy lentils. Or that a roux tastes so much better if you just sauté it for a few minutes, which anyone would always do if they just knew about it, and it's the job of a recipe to tell them.
But in the end, I dont think cooks are more pompous about their craft than carpenters or painters are about their work. They wouldn't use steel screws for wood or a broad brush for corners. It's a craft and people get angry if someone gives wrong explanations.
I love a good "actually" moment, and you nailed it.
I think it's much closer to a béchamel. The recipes I've found dont really create a roux first, but if they did, a Bechamel is exactly what you're creating if you add milk instead of water or broth and mix it until your wrist falls off.
The point is (and this hasn't really been refuted) that both biscuits and gravy mean something quite different in different regions.
And what you associate with these terms differs depending on where you live and what you've eaten before.
Tbh, I'd have more of an issue with the biscuits than with the gravy. White gravy, ok, that exists. Gravy with meat in it, well, doesn't strike me as a gravy but more of a meat sauce, but ok. But biscuits to me are hard and sweet and definitely not something that should come in contact with any kind of gravy.
Well, biscuits used to refer to essentially just hardtack so by "traditional" English standards both the modern English and American usage of the word is incorrect and unfounded. Traditional biscuits would have neither been soft and bread-y nor crumbly and sweet. They'd have been essentially rocks of flour. The Latin term that biscuit is descended from etymologically quite literally means "twice-baked."
Of course, no one defines a biscuit that way anymore. We all know contextually what things refer to nowadays in a globalized society and using our big ol' brains we figure out what one another means well enough.
Unless you're literally anyone from the island of Britain (or were taught your English by them), apparently, because I see you lot online trying to chastise everyone else for their use of the language way more than anyone else in the Anglosphere. Frankly, at a certain point, you guys are the stick in the mud and need to catch up with everyone else in the entire rest of the globe. That doesn't mean giving up your 'u' in color, exactly the opposite actually. It just means that a part of living in the modern world is accepting that you'll need to speak to people from all around the globe and learn to be a big boy and discern meaning even when it isn't immediately obvious to you.
Holy shit for people notoriously known for despising the French you think you guys would stop trying to do your best L'Académie française impression on the internet all the fucking time.
For someone propagating an open mind, you are surprisingly quick to jump to wrong conclusions and then going hard towards chastising the windmills you are fighting.
Maybe because these windmills won't shut the fuck up already.
What's wrong with you, seriously? Do you have anger management issues?
just to clarify i’m a different person than that guy.
but if you’d like to do something else other than call me wrong and stupid i’m all ears lmfao.
& like i’ll be real i don’t think anyone has really been rude to you or anyone else in this thread. if you say stupid shit and then people tell you that - it isn’t rude it’s just tuesday. i don’t think anyone here is angry, people just get somewhat abrasive when they believe others are being willfully ignorant. you don’t have to believe that is true yourself but check your ratio here man, read the room.
sorry if you feel like you’re under attack in this thread or something. it’s been pretty lighthearted thus far imo.
This is one of the dumber things to try and gate keep.
Words have meaning. Sometimes multiple meanings. Not just the meaning that you know.
I'm here for the hilarious sauce gatekeeping tbf.
That doesn't look like biscuits or gravy to me.
Um... literally every time I've had biscuits and gravy, it's literally gravy poured over biscuits. Every time. Without fail. It's kind of in the name.
the cultural difference is that the US is the only place in the world that calls “flaky scone-like buttery thing” biscuits
everywhere else in the world, biscuit means cookie or cracker
Instead of flaky biscuits, imagine cookies
And brown gravy.
and instead of gravy, its beans
So a chocolate chip cookie
I'm fairly sure that's where the game soggy biscuit originated from
Oh no...
Yeah, English is my only language and I was thinking wtf is biscuits and gravy? How does that go together in any way?
It's actually freaking delicious and if you ever visit the USA you should definitely try it at some local family-owned restaurant where they make it from scratch.
Give your fascists the Mussolini treatment and I may consider visiting
Or just make it yourself. The biscuits are dirt simple, butter, flour, baking powder, and just enough water to hold it together. Gravy is just a white flour gravy with lots of pepper. Ingredients are sausage with grease, flour, milk, and pepper.
Season to taste.
Wonderful de-escalation lol.
Well it was pretty unnecessary when talking about food lol
I mean, yes, biscuits have simple ingredients but I would say getting them right is actually pretty difficult (I'm Southern and it took me ages and the help of my elders to get a good biscuit technique down).
There are some good YouTube videos on the subject though. I find the key is COLD hands and ice water!
Hell, even a white gravy with no sausage is still good if made right with a good fat as the base.
Good butter will start a sawmill gravy just fine. Bacon grease is pretty excellent as well. Add criminal amounts of black pepper. Best gravy for chicken fried steak.
UK biscuit is American cookie. American biscuit is more like UK scone. We'll discuss muffins later.
Yea I'm a northern neighbor of the US, and while we do have common cultural elements, it's my first time hearing of that meal.
I don't need to imagine this.
I watched the Great British Bakeoff Mexican week.
Originally biscuits were just hardtack since they had to be rebaked in water to properly be eaten. Shortbread cookies and baking soda leavened bread both diverged from this common root and as such both qualify as biscuits equally.
The definition of it is actually what it is though. White gravy is still gravy. And Making it a brisket is hardly that different. I mean swap the bread with the meat ok, but hardly a stretch.
Hold up! First I am confused why someone would combine biscuits - something sweet - with gravy - something savoury - and now you're telling me it's something different alltogether?! (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻ Medness! Utter madness!
I looked the dish up. Even more confusion as I investigate having mixrd up my vocabularies