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French Thickening; Or, Brown Roux

A brown roux made by melting butter, adding flour, and cooking 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 ↓

French Thickening; Or, Brown Roux

Ingredients

Directions

Clarify the butter

  1. Melt the butter over low heat.

  2. Remove the butter from heat.

  3. Skim off any sediment.

  4. Pour the clear butter into a clean frying pan.

Make the roux

  1. Place the pan over low heat.

  2. Gradually add the flour while shaking the pan.

  3. Stir constantly until the mixture turns a light brown color.

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

Unsalted butter
Provides the fat that coats flour starch, keeping the roux smooth and flavorful.
All-purpose flour
Its starch thickens sauces once cooked, and toasting it browns and deepens flavor.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour as it browns. Flour toasts over low heat, and its browning sugars and proteins can scorch quickly if left unstirred, producing bitter flavor and a ruined roux.

“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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