Gravy is a savory sauce made from the juices that drip from cooking meat, thickened with flour or cornstarch and seasoned with salt, pepper, and herbs. When you roast a turkey or cook a pot roast, flavorful brown liquid collects in the bottom of the pan. That liquid, mixed with a thickener and heated until it becomes smooth and pourable, becomes gravy.

Gravy transforms ordinary food into something special. Mashed potatoes become much more interesting with gravy poured over them. Biscuits, roasted vegetables, and sliced turkey all taste better with gravy. On Thanksgiving, many families consider gravy essential, ladling it generously over everything on their plates.

The word also appears in expressions about easy success or unexpected benefits. If something is gravy, it's a bonus you didn't count on, like finding extra cookies in a package when you expected only twelve. When someone says a job is a gravy train, they mean it pays well for relatively little effort. These phrases come from the idea that gravy makes everything better, so getting gravy is like getting something extra and delicious you weren't necessarily expecting.