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Sauce

White Roux

A roux made from clarified butter and flour, cooked over medium heat until thick but not browned.

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 ↓

White Roux

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Clarify the butter in a frying pan.

  2. Gradually add the flour while stirring.

  3. Continue stirring over medium heat until it forms a thick paste, but do not let it brown.

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
Carries the flour and gives the roux a rich, fat-based flavor and smooth texture.
Flour
Starch that thickens the fat into a paste and later sauces when cooked.

The step that matters

Keep the roux from browning. Cooking the flour-fat paste over medium heat while stirring cooks out raw starch taste and thickens it evenly; if it browns, the flavor and thickening power change, so the paste must stay pale and stirred constantly.

“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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