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Roux Brun

A brown roux made by browning butter and flour, then adding stock or water.

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 Brun

Ingredients

Directions

Make the roux

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

  2. Add the flour and stir rapidly until very brown.

  3. Gradually pour in the stock or water, stirring vigorously to avoid lumps.

  4. Continue stirring until the mixture is smooth.

Use

  1. Use the roux for dark meat and dark game.

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 form the base of the roux, adding richness.
Flour
Thickens the liquid as its starch swells, and browns to add a deeper, nutty colour and flavour.
Stock
Forms the liquid that the cooked flour thickens into a smooth sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring in the stock. Adding liquid to hot flour can form lumps as starch clumps before it disperses. Pouring gradually while stirring vigorously lets the starch separate and hydrate evenly, producing a smooth sauce.

“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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