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French Thickening, or Brown Roux

A roux made by melting butter and gradually adding flour until lightly browned, 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 and heat it over low heat.

  3. Gradually add the flour while shaking the pan to mix, stirring constantly until it turns a light brown color.

Store and use

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

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 into the roux.
Flour
Starch that thickens liquids once heated, and toasts to add nutty color and flavor.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour into the butter until light brown. Flour must be stirred constantly over low heat so it cooks evenly. Uneven heat or stopping can scorch the starch, giving a bitter taste and weaker thickening, so the roux should be watched closely.

“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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