The term gravy has a rich history dating back to the late fourteenth-century cookbook The Forme of Cury, where it was originally spelled as gravey. Variations such as greve, grovy, greavie, greavy, and gravie also existed. It was borrowed from Old French grave, which was a result of a misspelling of their word for “stew”, grané. This word can be traced back to the Latin word for “seed”, granum, as soups were often seasoned with grain-like spices. Interestingly, the Latin root grhnom, from which granum is derived, also means “seed”. The literary usage of the term gravy reached its peak in 1787, and Google searches for it tend to spike in November.
