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Roux for Sauces

A roux is a butter and flour mixture used as a thickening agent for sauces.

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 ↓

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 it cool slightly.

Thin and simmer

  1. Mix in your gravy or stock until smooth.

  2. Place on a low heat.

  3. Let it simmer for one hour, skimming off any grease.

  4. Move to a warmer part of the hot-plate to reduce or boil down.

Check and strain

  1. Check the consistency by letting it drop from a spoon slowly.

  2. Pass through a tamis before using.

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 with the flour to form the roux, adding richness and carrying flavor through the sauce.
Flour
Its starch swells when heated in liquid, thickening the sauce.
Potato starch
Swells in liquid like flour to thicken the sauce, as an alternative thickener.

The step that matters

Mix in the gravy or stock after the roux has cooled slightly. Adding liquid to a very hot roux can cause lumps. Cooling it slightly lets the starch disperse evenly as the liquid is stirred in until smooth.

“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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