Skip to main content
Main

Gravy, White Roux, for Thickening

A roux made from butter and flour used to thicken white sauces.

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 ↓

Gravy, White Roux, for Thickening

Ingredients

Directions

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

  2. Add the flour and stir continuously for about 15 minutes, without allowing it to brown.

  3. Use this roux to thicken white sauces.

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
Adds fat and richness, and carries the flour so it cooks smoothly into a paste.
All-purpose flour
Its starch thickens liquids once cooked into the butter, giving the roux its thickening power.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour into the butter. Stirring constantly over low heat keeps the flour cooking evenly and prevents browning. Browning changes the flavour and colour and weakens the roux's thickening power in a white sauce.

“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

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes