Origin
Red Eye Gravy's name comes from its distinct appearance. Prepared traditionally, when coffee and grease are combined in the final step (see Preparation, below) the coffee and grease form a heterogeneous mixture, with the water-based coffee sinking to the bottom and the oil-based grease forming the top layer. In a round bowl, therefore, the mixture looks much like a red human eye.
Less traditional preparation techniques do not always result in the "red eye" appearance, leading to folk legends surrounding the origin of the name. For instance, that former United States President Andrew Jackson requested ham with gravy as red as his cook's eyes, which were bloodshot from drinking the night before, or that the black coffee in the gravy will keep people awake.
Read more about this topic: Red-eye Gravy
Famous quotes containing the word origin:
“High treason, when it is resistance to tyranny here below, has its origin in, and is first committed by, the power that makes and forever re-creates man.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The real, then, is that which, sooner or later, information and reasoning would finally result in, and which is therefore independent of the vagaries of me and you. Thus, the very origin of the conception of reality shows that this conception essentially involves the notion of a COMMUNITY, without definite limits, and capable of a definite increase of knowledge.”
—Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914)
“In the woods in a winter afternoon one will see as readily the origin of the stained glass window, with which Gothic cathedrals are adorned, in the colors of the western sky seen through the bare and crossing branches of the forest.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)