Home › The Principles of Cookery › Thickening, White, for Sauces
Thickening, White, for Sauces
In making white thickening for sauces, follow exactly the directions given for making brown thickening (see THICKENING, BROWN), remembering only that the mixture must not be allowed to colour. In order to prevent this it must be baked over a very gentle fire, and it must not remain on the fire so long as in the former case. When done enough it must be turned into an earthen jar, and set aside for use. White thickening is used for thickening white sauces. Time to bake, about twenty minutes. Sufficient, a dessert-spoonful will thicken a pint of gravy.
This is a white roux made in bulk and stored, a standard economy of the Victorian professional kitchen. The whole point of the entry is the one word colour: the moment the flour takes on any tint, it is brown thickening and belongs in a different sauce.
- The hinge: no colourKeep the pan barely bubbling and stir often. Flour that browns develops a nutty flavour and loses thickening power, so a browned batch will neither taste nor behave like the white version.
- "Baked over a very gentle fire"Nothing goes in the oven. Cassell's uses bake loosely for slow dry cooking in a pan; the modern equivalent is the lowest setting on a burner, or a heavy pan set over a diffuser.
- ProportionsThe original sends you to the brown thickening entry for quantities, which are not repeated here. Victorian thickenings of this kind are generally butter and flour worked together in roughly equal weight; about 4 oz of each (115 g) makes a manageable batch.
- Twenty minutesThat is long for a white roux by modern habit, but at genuinely low heat it is what removes the raw-flour taste. Judge by smell and texture rather than the clock: it should smell faintly of biscuit and slacken to a smooth paste, never turn blond.
- A dessert-spoonfulAbout two teaspoons, roughly 10 g. The pint is an imperial one, 20 fl oz or about 2 1/2 US cups, so this is a light napping consistency rather than a thick sauce. Double it for anything meant to coat.
- Avoiding lumpsStored thickening is used cold. Whisk it into hot liquid a little at a time, or bring the liquid to a simmer and drop in small pieces, letting each dissolve before the next.
- StorageThe earthen jar in a cold larder becomes a covered container in the refrigerator, where it keeps two to three weeks; it also freezes well, and a tablespoon-portioned ice tray makes it easy to measure.
White and brown thickenings are the two roux of French practice — roux blanc and roux brun — absorbed into English cookery through the great house kitchens of the nineteenth century and codified in the sauce systems generally traced to Carême. The entry is infrastructure rather than a dish: a cook who made up a jar could thicken a béchamel, a fricassee or a blanquette from the same store. The instruction to store it in an earthenware jar reflects a kitchen without refrigeration, where a fat-and-flour paste kept in a cool larder was one of the more reliably stable preparations on the shelf.