No. 163

Blonde and Brown Roux

Roux blond et brun

Roux is flour fried in butter and allowed to attain more or less color; it is used for thickening gravies, soup stocks and sauces; there are two kinds of roux, the blonde and the brown; the blonde is made as follows: Put into a saucepan to melt, one pound and two ounces of butter, add to it one pound of sifted flour and place the saucepan on a moderate fire to let it cook slowly while stirring until it becomes of a light blonde; this is used for veloute. For the brown, leave it on the fire or in a slack oven until it assumes a darker color; should it not be necessary to use it at once, pour it into a vessel, and employ it as needed, but when required for immediate use, take it from the fire, leave it in the pan and let it lose a few degrees of its heat before moistening it. For a veloute, dilute it with a white veloute stock, and a brown espagnole stock if needed for brown; the proportions for both veloute and espagnole being: one pound and two ounces of butter, one pound of flour and four quarts of either white or brown stock.

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For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer's roux is a professional batch quantity intended to thicken a gallon of stock; scale it down freely, since the ratio is what matters.

The ratio18 oz butter to 16 oz flour, thinned with 4 quarts of stock. That is roughly 8 oz of combined fat and flour per quart of liquid, a proportion suited to a sauce that will be simmered and reduced at length. For a modern quart of sauce served straight, about half that is often enough.
Weigh, do not scoopA pound of sifted flour is about 4 cups; a pound and two ounces of butter is four and a half sticks. Because the original works by weight, a scale gets you far closer than cup measures.
Butter exceeds flour on purposeButter exceeds flour -- 18 oz to 16 oz. Ranhofer does not say why, though the extra fat would keep the paste loose enough to stir and to pour into a vessel for later use.
"Slack oven"About 250-300F. Browning the brown roux in the oven rather than on the burner is the surer method for a batch this size: it colors from all sides and cannot catch on the pan bottom while your back is turned.
The hingeLet the roux cool a few degrees before adding liquid, as the text says. Very hot roux met with liquid spits violently and can seize into lumps. The old rule of hot roux with cool stock, or cool roux with hot stock, is the same instruction in shorter form.
Keeping itPoured off and chilled, roux keeps well refrigerated and longer frozen. Ranhofer says only to pour it into a vessel and employ it as needed if it is not wanted at once.
YieldAbout 2 lb of roux, enough to thicken 4 quarts of sauce. A quarter batch, roughly 4 oz butter and 4 oz flour, suits a single quart of velouté or espagnole at home.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchen at Delmonico's in New York, and The Epicurean (1894) is a restaurant manual before it is a home cookbook, which is why a batch of roux here starts at a pound of flour. Roux as a named preparation belongs to the French codification of sauces that runs from La Varenne in the seventeenth century through Carême in the early nineteenth; Ranhofer treats blonde roux and brown roux as two distinct stores, one destined for velouté and one for espagnole. The instruction to make it in quantity and hold it in a vessel reflects the reality of a brigade kitchen, where the thickening was prepared once and drawn on all service long. The dark, near-mahogany roux of Louisiana cooking is the same flour-and-fat paste pushed well past anything Ranhofer would have recognized as brown.