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Brown Thickening, or Roux

A brown roux is made by cooking clarified butter and flour together until browned.

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 Thickening, or Roux

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the clarified butter in a saucepan over low heat.

  2. Stir in the flour with a wooden spoon until smooth.

  3. Cook on low heat for about 1 hour, stirring constantly until it turns a nice brown color.

  4. Transfer to a bowl for later use.

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

Clarified butter
Provides fat that coats the flour and carries the nutty flavor as the roux browns.
Flour
Its starch thickens liquids later, and its proteins and sugars brown slowly during cooking.

The step that matters

Cooking the roux on low heat. Low, steady heat lets the flour toast evenly, building color and flavor without scorching. Stirring constantly prevents hot spots that can burn the flour and leave a bitter taste.

“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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