The Chemistry of Cookery

Roux;’ the English for _liaison_ is a thickening. It is really fried flour. Burnt onion is another form of caramel, with a special flavour superadded. Plain sugar caramel is improved by the use of a little butter, as in making toffee. Thus prepared it is really a fried sugar rather than a baked sugar. _Beurre noir_ (black butter) is another of the caramelised preparations used by continental cooks. While engaged upon your macaroni, look around at the other dishes served to other customers. Instead of the pale slices of meat spread out in a little puddle of pale watery liquid, that are served in English restaurants of corresponding class, you will see dainty morsels, covered with rich brown gravy, or surrounded by vegetables immersed in the same. This ‘sugo’ is greatly varied according to the requirements, by additions of stock-broth, tarragon vinegar, ketchup, &c., but burnt flour, burnt sugar, or burnt onions, or burnt something is the basis of it all. To further test the flavouring properties of browning, take some eels cut up as usual for stewing; divide into two portions; stew one brutally—by this I mean simply in a little water—serving them with this water as a pale gravy or juice. Let the second portion be well fried, fully caramelised or browned, then stewed, and served with brown gravy. Compare the result. Make a corresponding experiment with a beefsteak. Cut it in two portions; stew one brutally in plain water; fry the other, then stew it and serve brown. Take a highly-baked loaf—better one that is black outside; scrape off the film of crust that is quite black, _i.e._ completely carbonised, and you will come to a rich brown layer, especially if you operate upon the bottom crust. Slice off a thin shaving of this and eat it critically. Mark its high flavour as compared with the comparatively insipid crumb of the same loaf, and note especially the resemblance between this flavour and that of the caramel from sugar, and that of the browned eels and browned steak. A delicate way of detecting the flavour due to the