Skip to main content
Main

Thickening for Gravies and Soups

A butter and flour paste used to thicken gravies and soups.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 enough flour to create a paste-like thickness.

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

Cool and store

  1. Pour the mixture into an earthen pan and let it cool.

  2. Store in a cool place; it lasts up to two weeks in summer and longer in winter.

Use

  1. Use a large spoonful to thicken a quart of 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

Fresh butter
Carries the flour and adds richness and flavour to the thickener.
Fine flour
Starch that swells when heated in fat, thickening the gravy it is added to.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour and butter over low heat. Cooking the flour in fat for a long time with constant stirring cooks out its raw taste and keeps it smooth. Stopping early or letting it scorch leaves lumps or a burnt flavour.

“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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes