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 ↓
To Make Roux
Ingredients
Directions
Make the roux
Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat until it reaches the boiling point.
Sprinkle in the sifted flour and mix well.
Cook the mixture over the heat, stirring constantly, until the flour is well cooked and the roux reaches your desired color.
Use
Use in soups and sauces as needed.
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.
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- Melts to form the fat base that coats the flour and carries flavor.
- All-purpose flour
- Its starch thickens the fat and, once cooked, gives the sauce body.
The step that matters
Cooking the flour with constant stirring. Flour must cook in the fat long enough to lose its raw, starchy taste, and constant stirring prevents scorching at the bottom of the pan. The color darkens as the roux cooks, which also reduces its thickening power, so the cook should stop at the shade the dish needs.
“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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