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French Thickening, or Brown Roux

A roux made with butter and flour, cooked until light brown, used to thicken soups or gravies.

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 ↓

French Thickening, or Brown Roux

Ingredients

Directions

Make the roux

  1. Melt the butter over low heat and skim off any impurities.

  2. Pour the clarified butter into a clean frying pan over low heat.

  3. Gradually add the flour while shaking the pan to mix.

  4. Stir constantly until the mixture turns a light brown color.

Store and use

  1. Store in a jar and stir a spoonful or two into boiling soup or gravy as needed.

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

Unsalted butter
Provides fat that coats the flour particles and carries flavor during cooking.
All-purpose flour
Starch that thickens liquids once cooked in fat and browns to add nutty flavor.

The step that matters

Stir constantly until light brown. Flour in hot fat can scorch quickly and turn bitter, so constant stirring keeps the roux even in color and flavor. Heat must stay low so the starch cooks gently.

“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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