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Brown Roux

A brown roux is made by cooking butter and flour until light brown.

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 ↓

Brown Roux

Ingredients

Directions

Clarify the butter

  1. Melt the butter gently in a saucepan over low heat.

  2. Once it begins to simmer, skim it thoroughly.

  3. Remove from heat and let it stand until the milk solids sink to the bottom.

  4. Pour off the clear butter, leaving the sediment behind.

Make the roux

  1. Heat the clarified butter in a frying pan.

  2. Dredge the flour into the butter and stir over low heat until it turns light 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
Provides the fat that carries flavor and helps the roux brown evenly as it cooks.
Flour
Its starch thickens the mixture, and its proteins and sugars brown to add flavor.

The step that matters

Stirring the roux over low heat until light brown. Flour browns through slow, even heating. Too much heat scorches the outside before the inside colors, leaving a bitter taste. Constant stirring keeps the flour from sticking and burning.

“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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