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Sauce

Brown Roux

A roux made by browning butter and flour together.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 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 ↓

Brown Roux

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter slowly in a pan.

  2. Gradually sprinkle in the flour while stirring constantly.

  3. Continue stirring until the mixture is a nice, delicate brown, being careful not to over-brown it.

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 the flour and carries flavor as the roux cooks.
Flour
Starch that thickens the fat and browns during cooking, building color and nutty flavor.

The step that matters

Browning the roux. Flour darkens quickly once it starts to brown, and stirring constantly keeps it from scorching. Over-browned roux loses thickening power and tastes bitter, so pull it off the heat at the right shade.

“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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