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Sauce

White Roux

A white roux is a sauce base made by cooking butter, flour, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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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 ↓

White Roux

Ingredients

Directions

Make the roux

  1. Melt butter slowly over low heat in a saucepan with a little water.

  2. Stir in well-dried flour until thick like paste.

  3. Simmer for 15 minutes, stirring constantly to prevent burning.

Store

  1. Store in a jar for up to 3 days.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

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.

  1. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked 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
Provides fat that coats flour starch, keeping the roux smooth and adding rich flavour.
Flour
Its starch thickens liquids once heated, giving the roux its body.

The step that matters

Simmering while stirring constantly. Roux scorches easily once the flour toasts, and burnt starch turns bitter and loses thickening power. Constant stirring spreads heat evenly so the mixture cooks without catching on the pan.

“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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