Skip to main content
Sauce

White Thickening

A white sauce thickening made by melting butter, adding sifted flour, and simmering gently to keep it white and smooth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 Thickening

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the butter

  1. Cut the butter into pieces and place it in a well‑tinned or enameled saucepan.

  2. Melt the butter slowly over moderate heat, shaking the pan frequently and skimming off any scum.

  3. Once no more scum appears, let the butter settle for a few minutes.

  4. Pour off the clear liquid, leaving the sediment behind.

  5. Wash the saucepan or use a clean one.

  6. Return the melted butter to the saucepan.

Make the roux

  1. Gradually add sifted flour to the butter, stirring well after each addition until the mixture is very thick and smooth.

  2. Keep the mixture white by simmering gently without allowing it to boil or brown.

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 flavour, giving the sauce richness.
Flour
Starch that absorbs melted butter and swells with heat to thicken the sauce.

The step that matters

Keep the mixture white by simmering gently. Strong heat can scorch or brown the butter and flour, changing the colour and flavour. Gentle simmering keeps the roux pale and lets the starch thicken smoothly without a burnt 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.

You might also like

Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipesDutch SauceDutch Sauce74 recipes