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White Roux, or French Thickening

A roux made with butter and flour, used to thicken white gravies or sauces.

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 ↓

White Roux, or French Thickening

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat until it simmers.

  2. Dredge in the flour immediately and stir continuously.

  3. Do not allow the mixture to take on any color.

  4. Use this roux for white gravies or 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
Melts to carry the flour and provides richness and a smooth, silky texture.
All-purpose flour
Starch that thickens the butter into a paste, which then thickens liquids when they are added.

The step that matters

Keep the roux from coloring. Cooking the flour and butter while stirring constantly keeps the starch pale and gives a neutral flavor and full thickening power. Browning the roux adds nutty flavor but weakens thickening, so it is unsuitable for white sauces.

“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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