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Brown Thickening for Gravy

A roux made by browning butter and flour in the oven to thicken gravy.

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 for Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

  1. Melt the butter and flour together in a saucer.

  2. Place the saucer in the oven at 350°F (175°C).

  3. Occasionally stir the mixture until the flour is baked.

  4. Remove when the flour is a light fawn color.

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
Carries the flour evenly and adds richness and a nutty aroma as it cooks.
Flour
Its starch thickens gravy, and baking it in fat gives the roux a toasted flavor and color.

The step that matters

Remove when the flour is a light fawn color. Baking flour in fat slowly develops color and nutty flavor, but it darkens quickly near the end. Removing it at the light fawn stage keeps the flavor mild and the thickening power strong.

“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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