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Sauce

For Roux

A roux is a browned butter and flour mixture used to thicken sauces.

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 ↓

For Roux

Ingredients

Directions

Make the roux

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

  2. Skim off any foam that forms on the surface.

  3. Once the butter settles, gradually stir in the flour.

  4. Cook the mixture, stirring constantly, until it turns a light brown color.

Store

  1. Transfer the roux to a jar for storage.

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 particles and carries flavor, and its milk solids brown during cooking.
Flour
Starch that thickens the fat into a paste, and toasting it builds nutty color and flavor.

The step that matters

Cooking the roux over low heat with constant stirring. Flour starch thickens best when evenly coated in fat and cooked gently. Too much heat or too little stirring can scorch the milk solids and flour, giving a burnt taste and uneven color.

“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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Brown 40White 22Butter 3French 3 See all 24 →

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