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Soup

White Roux

A white roux is a butter and flour paste thickened with broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

White Roux

Ingredients

Directions

Make the roux

  1. Heat the butter in a frying pan until it hisses.

  2. Stir in the flour until the paste is smooth and lump-free.

  3. Gradually pour in the hot broth, beating it in well.

Finish and serve

  1. Return the mixture to the soup kettle and let it boil once before serving.

  2. Season to taste.

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
Fat that coats flour particles and carries flavour into the sauce.
Flour
Starch that thickens the liquid as it gelatinises with heat.
Broth
Liquid that hydrates the starch, turning the paste into a smooth sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the hot broth. Beat the broth in gradually so the starch disperses evenly. Adding it all at once or cold can trap lumps that are hard to smooth out later.

“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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