Home › R › Roux, White (for thickening White Sauces)
Roux, White (for thickening White Sauces)
Allow the same proportions of butter and flour as in the preceding recipe, and proceed in the same manner as for brown roux; but do not keep it on the fire too long, and take care not to let it colour.
This is used for thickening white sauce.
Pour it into a jar to use when wanted.
A dessertspoonful will thicken a pint of gravy.
TIME. hour.
Note. Besides the above, sauces may be thickened with potato flour, ground rice, baked flour, arrowroot, &c.: the latter will be found far preferable to the ordinary flour for white RUMP-STEAK. sauces. A slice of bread, toasted and added to gravies, answers the two purposes of thickening and colouring them.
A keeping roux, cooked in quantity and stored in a jar to be spooned into sauces as needed — a professional habit that dates from kitchens working without instant thickeners. The whole point of this version is that it stays pale.
- ProportionsThe amounts are carried over from the brown roux entry and do not appear on this page. Equal weights of butter and flour give a paste that firms up in the jar and measures reliably; slightly more flour than butter makes it drier and crumblier.
- Keep the colour outThis is the hinge. Cook over the lowest possible heat, stirring, only until the raw-flour smell goes and the mixture looks like wet sand — a few minutes. The moment it takes on any straw colour it will tint a white sauce grey-beige.
- The stated timeThe time given here has lost its figure. The recipe itself only says not to keep it on the fire too long, and any time given assumes a cool corner of a coal range rather than a gas or induction burner. On a modern hob you will reach the same point far sooner.
- A dessertspoonfulAbout two teaspoons, roughly 10 ml. For a pint (20 fl oz British, so 2 1/2 cups) of stock that gives a light pouring sauce; double it for a coating consistency.
- Storing itThe jar was meant for a cold larder and short-term use. Refrigerate it and use within a week, or freeze it in a shallow block and break off pieces — butter and flour both pick up staleness quickly.
- Whisking it inCold roux into hot liquid, added in small pieces and whisked, is the least lumpy route. Let the sauce simmer two or three minutes after it thickens so the starch swells fully.
- The alternative thickenersArrowroot and potato flour give a clearer, glossier sauce than wheat flour, and the note singles out arrowroot as preferable for white work, but they thin again if boiled hard or held hot for long. Baked flour means flour dried in a slow oven to reduce its pastiness; the recipe gives no temperature.
Roux reached English kitchens as part of the wholesale adoption of French sauce technique in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and this recipe treats it as a store-cupboard preparation rather than a step within a dish: it is made in quantity and potted to be drawn on when wanted. The closing note is a small window on the period's wider thickening repertoire — potato flour, ground rice, arrowroot, and the trick of dropping a slice of toast into gravy, which the recipe says serves to colour as well as thicken.