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Roux for Sauces

A roux made by melting butter, adding flour or starch, then incorporating gravy or stock to form a sauce base.

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 for Sauces

Ingredients

Directions

Make the roux

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Stir in the flour or potato starch with a wooden spoon.

  3. Let the mixture cool slightly.

  4. Mix in your gravy or stock until smooth.

Reduce and strain

  1. Place the mixture on low heat and let it simmer for one hour, skimming off any grease.

  2. Move the mixture to a warmer part of the stove to reduce.

  3. Check the consistency by letting it drop from a spoon.

  4. Pass the mixture through a fine sieve.

  5. Use the resulting roux as a base for flavor 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
Adds fat and rich flavor, and coats the flour so it blends smoothly.
Flour or potato starch
Thickens the liquid as its starch swells when heated, giving the sauce body.
Gravy or stock
Supplies the liquid that the thickened base becomes sauce from.

The step that matters

Mix in your gravy or stock until smooth. Adding liquid to a hot or unevenly mixed roux can leave lumps, because starch granules clump before they disperse. Letting the mixture cool slightly first and stirring steadily helps the starch spread evenly into the liquid.

“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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