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Ronx for Thickening Soups, Gravies, Etc.

A roux is a mixture of butter and flour used to thicken soups and gravies.

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 ↓

Ronx for Thickening Soups, Gravies, Etc.

Oven, in the book's wordsA warm oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the roux

  1. In a saucepan, bring the butter to a boil, being careful not to let it burn.

  2. Remove from heat and skim off the froth.

  3. Pour the butter into a clean saucepan, avoiding any sediment.

  4. Add enough flour to create a stiff paste.

  5. Place on the stove in a warm area for four hours, stirring occasionally until it turns a rich, golden brown.

Use

  1. Use one large tablespoon to thicken a quart of soup.

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, and its milk solids brown as the roux cooks.
Flour
Its starch thickens the fat into a paste and later thickens liquids such as soup.

The step that matters

Keeping the butter from burning. Butter's milk solids scorch quickly above their browning point, giving a bitter taste and dark specks. Keeping heat gentle and clearing the froth and sediment helps the roux brown evenly and stay clean-flavoured.

“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.

More roux recipes

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

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