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:
“Someone had literally run to earth
In an old cellar hole in a byroad
The origin of all the family there.
Thence they were sprung, so numerous a tribe
That now not all the houses left in town
Made shift to shelter them without the help
Of here and there a tent in grove and orchard.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“The origin of storms is not in clouds,
our lightning strikes when the earth rises,
spillways free authentic power:
dead John Brown’s body walking from a tunnel
to break the armored and concluded mind.”
—Muriel Rukeyser (1913–1980)
“Each structure and institution here was so primitive that you could at once refer it to its source; but our buildings commonly suggest neither their origin nor their purpose.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)