Quick answer: Plan 1/3 cup (80 ml) of gravy per person when it dresses meat and one starch, and 1/2 cup (120 ml) when it also goes on stuffing and mashed potato. UK guidance sets a 125 ml minimum. For 20 guests that is 7 to 10 cups, or 1.7 to 2.5 litres.
One third of a cup — about 80 ml — per person is the standard American figure, and it is right for an American plate. It is meaningfully low for a British one, and the reason is not national appetite. It is arithmetic.
Gravy is the only dish on the holiday table that isn't a portion. It's a coating. The amount you need scales with how many things on the plate you pour it over, and that is the variable nobody states.
What the sources actually say
Four independent US sources land on the same number, which looks like consensus until you notice they never say what the plate looks like.
| Source | Per person | What it's measuring |
|---|---|---|
| The Old Farmer's Almanac | 1/3 cup (80 ml) | Buffet-scale planning chart |
| Food Network | 1/3 cup minimum | Thanksgiving plate |
| Ellen's Kitchen | 1/4–1/3 cup (60–80 ml) | Big-batch catering practice |
| Parade | 1/3–1/2 cup (80–120 ml) | Plated portion, scaled at 1/2 |
| Food Savvy (UK) | 125 ml minimum (~1/2 cup) | Full British roast dinner |
The UK figure is higher, and that's the whole answer
This one is worth sitting with, because it runs backwards to everything else on this site. On turkey, British and Irish public-health bodies publish figures roughly a third of the American ones. On gravy they publish figures roughly fifty per cent higher.
Food Savvy, the Norfolk and Suffolk food-waste programme, tells hosts to "make a minimum of 125 millilitres per person" — and Food Savvy's entire purpose is to stop you over-buying. Wychavon District Council publishes the identical wording, so treat these as one figure syndicated across the UK waste-reduction network rather than two independent findings. Even so: a body whose job is talking you down is talking you up past the American number.
The explanation is on the plate. An American Thanksgiving plate takes gravy on turkey and mashed potato — two components. A British Sunday or Christmas roast takes it on the meat, the roast potatoes, the stuffing, the Yorkshire pudding and usually the vegetables too — four or five. Same sauce, more than double the surface area. The British Dietetic Association's own Christmas dinner recipe uses 750 ml of stock for a gravy serving six to eight, which is 95–125 ml a head and lands in the same place.
So the sources aren't disagreeing. They're describing different dinners and not saying so.
Per person, by what the gravy touches
Count the components on the plate that will get gravy poured on them, then read across. These are our figures, built from the sources above rather than lifted from any one of them.
| Gravy goes on… | US cups | Metric |
|---|---|---|
| Meat only, carved and ladled | 1/4 cup | 60 ml |
| Meat plus one starch | 1/3 cup | 80 ml |
| Meat, mash and stuffing | 1/2 cup | 120 ml |
| Full roast: meat, roasties, stuffing, veg | 2/3 cup | 160 ml |
| Any of the above, guests pour their own | add 1/3 | add 1/3 |
That last row matters more than it looks. Every published figure is a plated figure — it assumes a cook holds the boat and ladles. Hand people the jug at a buffet and pours get generous, uneven and hard to reverse. If you're running a buffet, take the composition row above and add a third.
How much to make, by guest count
| Guests | US plate (1/3 cup) | UK roast (125 ml) |
|---|---|---|
| 6 | 2 cups | 750 ml |
| 10 | 3 1/3 cups | 1.25 L |
| 20 | 6 2/3 cups | 2.5 L |
| 30 | 10 cups | 3.75 L |
| 50 | 16 2/3 cups | 6.25 L |
Round up to the nearest whole quart or litre. Gravy is cheap, it freezes for four to six months, and it is the single most conspicuous thing to run out of.
The ceiling nobody mentions: drippings don't scale
Every other quantity on the holiday table scales with the shopping list. Buy more potatoes, get more mash. Gravy doesn't work that way, because its defining ingredient is a by-product of roasting one bird, and one bird is one bird.
We could not find a published, measured figure for how much drippings a roast turkey yields. No government agency, extension service or food body publishes one, and we looked. What exists instead is the instruction food editors give when they know the answer is "not enough": The Kitchn's turkey gravy method tells you to "measure the remaining drippings; you will need 2 cups. If you have less, make up the difference with low-sodium broth." That sentence is the ceiling, written down.
Take that 2 cups as a working best case for a 12–14 lb bird. It covers six people at the American figure and under four at the British one — before anyone goes back for seconds. Which means the honest position is this: at almost any real gathering, most of your gravy is stock. Above about eight guests, drippings are a flavour base, not a volume. Plan for that up front — have a quart or two of good turkey or chicken stock in the house, and make the roux to the volume you calculated in the table above rather than to the volume of liquid in the pan.
Two practical consequences. First, gravy is the one dish worth making mostly ahead: build a stock-based gravy the day before, then finish it with the drippings on the day. Second, if you're cooking for 20-plus you're likely roasting a bird and a breast, or two birds — collect both pans.
Holding it safely
Gravy is a recognised high-risk hold item and no page-one result on this query mentions it. USDA FSIS is unambiguous: keep it at 140 °F (60 °C) or above while serving, don't hold hot food longer than two hours, and when reheating, bring gravy to a rolling boil rather than merely warming it. Refrigerated leftovers keep three to four days; frozen, four to six months.
Where these numbers come from, and their bias
Two different trades publish gravy quantities with opposite instincts, and neither flags it. Portion planners — Almanac, Food Network, Food Savvy — size gravy to the guest, and their failure mode is a host running dry, so they round up. Recipe developers size gravy to the pan: The Kitchn's makes about 2 cups and claims to serve 8 to 10, which is a quarter cup a head and quietly below every planning figure on this page. Neither is wrong. The recipe is describing what one bird can produce; the planner is describing what a table will eat. When those two numbers differ, trust the planner and buy stock.
Gravy sits downstream of three other decisions, so size those first: how much turkey per person, how much mashed potato per person and how much stuffing per person. Two of those three are gravy-takers, which is exactly why the number moves. For the whole December table at once, see Christmas dinner quantities per person.
Doing Thanksgiving? The plate is only half of it — Thanksgiving drink quantities covers the other half, and how much food for Friendsgiving handles the potluck version where nobody's in charge of the gravy.