SC - Roux in the 16th C.?

[Anne-Marie Rousseau]

la Varenne (1651) specifies "A Thickning of flowre" whereby flour is cooked
with fat, and onion, broth, mushrooms and vinegar are added then the sauce
strained before use (a mirepoix?). Digby also specifies to thicken his beef
stew with flour cooked in fat and cautions that it not be too brown.

I know of no examples any earlier than these, though there are plenty of
examples of using uncooked flours of various sources to thicken through out
the corpus.
- --Anne-Marie

- ----------
> From: Valoise Armstrong <vjarmstrong at aristotle.net>
> To: sca-cooks at Ansteorra.ORG
> Subject: SC - Roux in the 16th C.?
> Date: Thursday, May 21, 1998 2:10 PM
> 
> I was reading Elinor Fettiplace's Cookbook and in it Hilary Spurling
claims
> that the roux was a 16th C. innovation. I've only ever seen one recipe,
> from the second half of that century, that involved thickening a sauce by
> browning flour in fat. Anyone know of any other examples or is Spurling's
> timetable a little early?
> 
> Valoise
> 
> 
>
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