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Roux, Brown, for Immediate Use

A brown roux made by browning butter and flour, then adding stock to create a smooth sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 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 ↓

Roux, Brown, for Immediate Use

Ingredients

Directions

Make the roux

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

  2. Add the dried flour and stir with a wooden spoon until it turns light brown, about 10 minutes.

  3. Remove the roux from heat for 2 minutes to cool.

Make the sauce

  1. Stir in the stock until it boils.

  2. Reduce heat.

  3. Let the sauce simmer until smooth and at the desired consistency.

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 and adds richness and flavor to the base.
Dried flour
Starch that thickens the sauce once it is combined with the hot liquid.
Stock
Liquid that gelatinizes the starch and forms the body of the sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour as it browns. Flour browns unevenly and can scorch on the bottom of the pan if heat is too high or stirring stops. Scorched starch gives a bitter taste and weakens thickening, so keep the heat low and stir constantly.

“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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