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White Roux

A roux made from butter and flour, cooked with 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 ↓

White Roux

Ingredients

Directions

Make the roux

  1. Melt the butter slowly in a saucepan over low heat with a little water.

  2. Stir in the dried flour until it forms a thick paste.

  3. Simmer for 15 minutes, stirring constantly to prevent burning.

Store

  1. Store in a cool place for up to 3 days.

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 flavor through the roux.
All-purpose flour
Its starch thickens the mixture once it is cooked in the melted fat.

The step that matters

Simmer while stirring constantly. Flour starch and milk solids can scorch on the bottom of the pan. Constant stirring spreads the heat evenly and cooks out the raw floury taste without burning the roux.

“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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