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Thickening for Gravies and Soups

A roux made from butter and flour used to thicken gravies and soups.

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 ↓

Thickening for Gravies and Soups

Ingredients

Directions

Make the roux

  1. Melt the butter in a stew pan over low heat.

  2. Gradually add flour until the mixture is the thickness of paste.

  3. Stir continuously with a wooden spoon for 15-20 minutes until smooth and golden.

Cool and store

  1. Pour into an earthen pan and let cool.

  2. Store for up to two weeks in summer and longer in winter.

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
Provides fat that coats the flour particles and carries flavour into the paste.
Fine flour
Its starch thickens the butter and sets into a stable paste as it cooks.

The step that matters

Stirring the roux while it cooks. Constant stirring over low heat spreads the heat evenly, so the flour cooks without scorching. Scorched flour turns bitter and dark, and it loses its thickening power.

“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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Brown 40White 22Butter 3French 3 See all 24 →

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