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Thickening, Brown
Take a pound of flour. Spread it on a newspaper or large dish, and dry it thoroughly before the fire, and afterwards sift it carefully. Put a pound of fresh butter into a stewpan over a gentle fire, and melt it very gradually. Skim carefully, and afterwards pour off the portion that looks like clear oil, and leave untouched the white thick substance which will have settled at the bottom. Pour the clear oiled butter into a clean stewpan, mix the dried and sifted flour thoroughly and gradually with it, and beat it over a gentle fire with a wooden spoon until it forms a thick mass. Continue to stir it patiently until it is lightly coloured. Draw it to the side of the fire, and throw in with it a slice of onion for flavouring, and do not cease to stir the mixture until it no longer bubbles. Take out the onion, pour the roux into an earthen jar, and let it get cold. It then will be ready for use. When wanted for thickening, mix the roux with the sauce, and stir it till it boils. The sauce only attains its proper consistency after it has been stirred and boiled. This thickening may be mixed with either hot or cold liquor. If cold, stir it over the fire till it boils. If hot, moisten the roux gradually, and off the fire, with the sauce, then pour it into the remainder, and stir it over the fire till it boils. In order to cleanse sauce that has been thickened, that is, to remove the fat which has not become thoroughly incorporated with the gravy, draw the saucepan to the side of the fire, and throw in a small quantity of lukewarm water. The fat, etc., will rise to the surface, and may be removed with a spoon. Time to brown the roux, about an hour. A dessert-spoonful will thicken a pint of gravy.
A classic brown roux made in bulk and stored, in the French manner that English cookery books of the period were busy adopting. Almost everything here still works; the parts that need translating are the vessels, the fire and the sheer quantity.
- The hinge: an hour of gentle heatThe colour must come slowly, from the flour toasting, not from scorching. On a modern hob that means the lowest setting a heavy pan will hold, with near-constant stirring; the moment you see black specks the batch is bitter and must be thrown out. A moderate oven in a cast-iron pan, stirred every ten minutes, is a lower-risk alternative.
- Clarified butter, in modern termsMelting, skimming and pouring off "the portion that looks like clear oil" is clarified butter. The white sediment left behind is milk solids, which would burn long before the flour reached its colour, hence the trouble taken. Ghee bought ready-made does the same job.
- Drying the flourPre-drying before the fire drove off moisture so the flour would blend smoothly into the fat and brown evenly. Modern flour is more consistently milled and stored, so a short spell in a low oven on a baking sheet is optional rather than necessary, though sifting still helps.
- Equal weightsA pound of flour to a pound of butter is roughly equal weights, which gives a stiff paste that sets firm when cold. That firmness is the point: it can be cut and spooned out of the jar as needed.
- A dessert-spoonful to a pintA dessertspoon is about two teaspoons, roughly 10 ml, and a pint here is the imperial 20 fl oz. That is a light thickening for gravy; for a sauce with body you will want two or three times as much. Brown roux thickens noticeably less than pale roux, because long toasting breaks down the starch.
- Scale it downTwo pounds of butter and flour is a restaurant's supply. A quarter of the recipe, 4 oz each of clarified butter and flour, is plenty for a domestic kitchen and browns more quickly in a small pan.
- StorageThe "earthen jar" was a cool larder crock. Keep it covered in the refrigerator, where it holds for weeks, or freeze it in a block and shave off what you need. Take the onion out as directed before it cools.
- Adding it to liquidThe instruction to slacken hot roux off the heat with a little of the sauce before returning it to the pan is the reliable route to a lump-free result, and it still is. Whichever way you go in, the sauce must reach a full boil and be held there a few minutes, or it will taste of raw flour and thin again on standing.
The word is French for reddish-brown, describing the colour the flour takes as it toasts. Making a pound at a time and potting it in a crock belongs to a household with a cook, a larder and a fire that stayed lit all day; an hour of constant stirring was a reasonable use of someone's morning if it meant every sauce afterwards could be thickened in minutes.