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Gravy, Brown, Roux for Thickening
Put a quarter of a pound of fresh butter into a scrupulously clean saucepan, melt it slowly, and add very gradually half a pound of flour. The flour should be shaken in from a dredgingbox, and stirred with a wooden spoon until the roux is perfectly smooth and a bright brown colour. The edge of the spoon should be pressed rather heavily on the bottom of the saucepan, to prevent burning, which would certainly spoil the roux. Though this thickening is best when freshly made, it will keep for a long time if poured into jars, and the surface kept entire. It is an improvement to make it with browned flour--that is, flour which has been kept in a slow oven until it is lightly browned all through. When this is used, the roux need not be so long on the fire. It may be used with either hot or cold gravy. If the gravy be hot, the roux should be moistened gradually with it off the fire; if cold, it should be stirred on the fire till the gravy boils. Time, about an hour and a half. Probable cost, 6d. A dessert-spoonful of roux will thicken a pint of gravy.
A brown roux in the old style: twice as much flour as butter, cooked long and slow until it colours. The proportions look wrong to anyone used to equal weights, but this is a concentrated thickening paste meant to be stored, not a sauce base made to order.
- The hinge: low heat, constant motionBrown roux catches easily, and burnt flour cannot be rescued; the recipe itself says burning "would certainly spoil the roux", and the taste turns bitter. Keep the pan on the lowest workable heat and use a wooden spoon pressed against the base, as directed, so nothing sits still long enough to catch.
- The proportions4 oz (115 g) butter to 8 oz (225 g) flour, by weight. That is a dry, sandy paste rather than the loose 1:1 roux of modern French practice, and it is deliberate: it keeps better and measures more consistently by the spoonful.
- About an hour and a halfNot an exaggeration; reaching a genuine bright brown over gentle heat really does take a long time. The recipe notes that with pre-browned flour the roux "need not be so long on the fire", though it gives no figure for how much shorter.
- Browning the flourA "slow oven" in books of this period is generally reckoned somewhere around 250–300°F / 120–150°C. Spread the flour thin on a tray and stir occasionally until it is the colour of pale sand throughout. Browned flour has somewhat less thickening power, which may be part of why a browned roux gives a lighter gravy.
- StorageThe advice to keep the surface entire dates from before refrigeration and is not sufficient on its own — butter goes rancid. Press into a small jar, cover the surface with a disc of parchment, and refrigerate for up to a month or freeze in a block and chip pieces off as needed.
- Hot gravy off the fire, cold gravy on itThis is sound and worth following. Whisking hot liquid into roux away from the heat lets the starch disperse before it swells; a cold liquid can go on the heat straight away because it heats slowly enough to do the same.
- Strength and yieldThe batch makes roughly 12 oz (340 g). A dessertspoonful is about 2 teaspoons, and the claim that it thickens a pint gives a light, pourable gravy rather than a coating sauce. Judge by eye and add more if you want body — flour-thickened gravy will not reach full thickness until it has boiled a minute.
- CostSixpence in this book's currency is a period reference point only; ignore it.
A jar of brown roux was infrastructure in a Victorian kitchen — the base from which espagnole, brown sauces and every day's gravy were drawn, made once in quantity by whoever had an hour and a half free. The technique is French, and the English kitchen absorbed it well before the Victorian period; earlier English gravies were thickened with bread, blood or simply reduced. The additional trick of browning the flour separately in a slow oven let the cook develop colour and nutty flavour in the oven's residual heat instead of standing over a pan. The instruction to keep the surface entire is a reminder of what storage meant before refrigeration: an unbroken skin of fat was the seal, and the jar was expected to last weeks.