leave their sauces with a translucent, glossy
appearance. The properties of root starches
suit them for last-minute corrections of sauce
consistency: less of them is required to lend a
given thickness, they thicken quickly, and
don’t need precooking to improve their flavor.
Potato Starch Potato starch was the first
commercially important refined starch and is
still an important food starch in Europe. It is
unusual for several characteristics. Its
granules are very large, up to a tenth of a
millimeter across, and its amylose molecules
are very long. This combination gives potato
starch an initial thickening power far greater
than that of any other starch. The long
amylose chains tangle with each other and
with the giant granules to block easy
movement of the sauce fluid. This
entanglement also creates long aggregates of
amylose and granules that can give the
impression of stringiness. And the large