Sauces--Why a Roux?

 Why a Roux?

The Three main reasons: it’s quicker, easier, and your food will taste better.

            Unlike the average home cook, the professional seldom, if ever, uses a white wash or slurrie (starch with little or no fat mixed with water) as a thickening agent (as I mentioned in Gravy Success-section 5-chapter 1, not too many years ago this same mixture was used to paint fences, out buildings and sometimes houses).

            When used in this way, flour always has a raw, uncooked taste and any fat rises to the top of the mixture. The simplest, and by far the best, method of thickening sauces is by means of a roux. Equal parts of fat and flour make the best roux. If much more fat than flour is used, again the fat rises to the top of the mixture. If less fat than flour is used, the paste may burn. Therefore, if more fat than flour is required in a sauce, small pieces should be beaten in after the liquid is added and just before the sauce is served: if less fat than starch is required, it is better not to use flour, or make a roux, a slurrie of cornstarch, tapioca, arrowroot or another method of thickening the sauce should be used..

            If a recipe calls for flour, use half as much cornstarch to thicken,1 Tbsp. cornstarch equals 2Tbsps. flour),but corn starch requires longer cooking than flour As with the use of a "white wash"  a quickly cooked cornstarch mixture always has a raw taste. Because of this raw starch taste, all sauces thickened with cornstarch should be cooked for at least fifteen minutes. Standing over hot water in a double boiler for an hour or longer also improves the flavour.

            If a sauce is too thin, it must be thickened by adding more of the thickening agent and recooking it. A starchy sauce or a cream soup is always thinner when hot than when cold. Even the amount of cooling which occurs in transferring a starchy sauce, gravy or soup from the cooking utensil to the serving dish perceptibly thickens it.

            If a sauce is lumpy, because proper precautions have not been taken in mixing and cooking the thickening agent with the liquid, the sauce should be strained; but such a sauce can never have the creamy smooth, velvety texture of a well-made one.

The Roux

The roux being the cohering element of leading sauces, it is necessary to reveal its preparation and constituents before giving one's attention to the latter.

Three kinds of roux are used — namely, brown roux, for brown sauces; pale or white roux, for Veloute, Béchamel,  or actual Cream Sauces-if such is  ever used.

Brown Roux

Quantities for making about One lb:

8 ozs. of clarified butter

9 ozs. of best-quality flour.

Preparation:

Mix the flour and butter in a very thick stew- pan, and put it on the side of the fire or in a moderate oven. Stir the mixture repeatedly so that the heat may be evenly distributed throughout the whole of its volume. The time allowed for the cooking of brown roux cannot be precisely determined, as it depends upon the degree of heat employed. The more intense the latter, the speedier will be the cooking, while the stirring will of necessity be more rapid. Brown roux is known to be cooked when it has acquired a fine, light brown colour, and when it exudes a scent resembling that of the hazel nut and characteristic of baked flour.

It is very important that brown roux should not be cooked too rapidly. As a matter of fact, among the various constituent elements of flour, the starch alone acts as the cohering principle. This starch is contained in little cells, which tightly constrain it, but which are sufficiently porous to permit the percolation of liquid and fatty substances. Under the influence of moderate heat and the in filtered butter, the cells burst through the swelling of the starch, and the latter thereupon completely combines with the butter, fat, or cooking oil; to form a mass capable of absorbing six times its own weight of liquid when cooked.

When the cooking takes place with a very high initial heat the starch gets burned within its shrivelled cells, and swelling is then possible only in those parts which have been least burned. The cohering principle is thus destroyed and double or treble the quantity of roux becomes necessary in order to obtain the required consistency. But this excess of roux in the sauce chokes it up without binding it, and prevents it from becoming clear. At the same time, the cellulose and the burnt starch lend a bitterness to the sauce of which no subsequent treatment can rid it.

Pale Roux:

The quantities are the same as for brown roux, but cooking must cease as soon as the colour of the roux begins to change, and before the appearance of any colouring whatsoever.

The observations I made relative to brown roux, concerning the cohering element, apply also to pale roux.

 White Roux:

Same quantities as for brown and pale roux, but the time of cooking is limited to a few minutes, as it is only needful, in this case, to do away with the disagreeable taste of raw flour which is typical of those sauces in which a whitewash slurry has been used or whose roux has not been sufficiently cooked. 

©Al (Alex-Alexander) D. Girvan. All rights  reserved.