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THICKENING, BROWN (M. Ude's way)
Put into a stewpan a piece of butter proportionate to the quantity of thickening intended to be prepared. Melt it gently; take out the buttermilk, then put flour enough to make a paste. Fry it on a slow fire, and then put it again over very red ashes till it be of a nice colour. Observe, this is to be obtained only by slow degrees. When of a light brown pour it into an earthen pan, and preserve for use. It will keep for a long time.
This is a brown roux, the thickening base for espagnole and most brown sauces. The whole method is a lesson in patience: the colour must come from slow toasting of the flour, not from scorching.
- The hinge: colour by degreesBrown roux takes 30 to 45 minutes over low heat, stirred often. If you see black specks or smell anything acrid, the batch is finished — bitterness cannot be stirred out, and you start again.
- "Take out the buttermilk"Ude means the milk solids and water that separate when butter melts: skim the foam and leave the milky residue behind. You are effectively clarifying the butter, which is what lets it be held at browning heat without burning.
- ProportionsUde gives no weights: 'a piece of butter proportionate' and 'flour enough to make a paste' leave it to the cook. The usual modern reading is roughly equal weights of clarified butter and flour; the paste should look like wet sand, not pourable batter.
- "Very red ashes"An open-hearth instruction: flameless but glowing embers, giving steady radiant heat, and note that it follows the 'slow fire' rather than repeating it. A heavy pan on a low burner, stirred often, is the nearest modern equivalent; a low oven will also work, but the recipe names no temperature.
- An earthen panThe ordinary earthenware storage vessel of the period. Any bowl or jar does; let the roux cool uncovered before sealing so trapped steam does not soften it.
- Keeping itThe claim that it keeps a long time is fair — there is almost no water in it — but a modern kitchen should refrigerate it in a sealed jar, where it holds for a couple of months, or freeze it. Butter left at room temperature for weeks will go rancid and take the sauce with it.
- How much to useReckon about 1 oz of finished roux per cup of stock for a light sauce, more for a coating consistency. Brown roux thickens noticeably less than pale roux, because the toasting breaks down some of the starch.
- Working it inWhisk hot stock into cool roux, or cool roux into hot stock — either avoids lumps. Then simmer at least 20 minutes to cook out the raw flour taste before seasoning.
"M. Ude" is Louis Eustache Ude, the French chef who worked in London for the Earl of Sefton and later ran the kitchens at Crockford's club, and whose The French Cook (1813) went through many English editions. Cassell's, compiled decades later, treats him as a settled authority and reproduces his method almost as scripture — which is why the directions still assume a hearth full of ashes rather than a range. The recipe belongs to the classical French system of grandes sauces, in which a single carefully browned roux underpins espagnole and the long line of derivative brown sauces; making it in quantity and storing it in a crock was standard practice in a professional kitchen, where the sauce cook could not stop to build a roux for every order. The insistence on slow colouring is the point of the whole entry: French kitchen writing of the period returns repeatedly to the idea that a scorched roux ruins everything built on it.