Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓
Roux Au Beurre
Ingredients
Directions
Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat.
Add the flour, adjusting the amount for desired thickness.
Cook until the mixture turns a light brown color for a brown roux, or do not let it brown for a white roux.
Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.
Explore the science
The flavor team
The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Butter
- Carries the flour and adds richness and fat to the sauce base.
- Flour
- Starch that thickens the liquid it is later mixed into once cooked.
The step that matters
Cooking the flour in the butter. Cooking the butter and flour together gelatinizes the starch and removes raw flour taste. Stopping at the right colour sets the roux's thickening power and flavour, since longer cooking reduces thickening while adding nutty, toasted notes.
“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.
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