On Food and Cooking

starch into a sauce. The first is to mix the
starch with some cold water, so that the
granules are wetted and separated before they
encounter gelation temperatures. The starch-
water slurry can then be added directly to the
sauce. A second method is to separate the
starch or flour particles not with water, but
with fat. Beurre manié, or “kneaded butter,” is
flour worked into a paste with its weight in
butter. When a piece of the paste is added to a
hot sauce in need of last-minute thickening,
the butter melts and gradually releases
greased starch particles into the liquid, where
their swelling and gelation are slowed by the
water-repelling surface layer.
A third method for getting starch into a
sauce is to introduce it early in the cooking,
not late. Many stews and fricassees are made
by dusting pieces of meat with flour, then
sautéing the pieces, and only then adding a
cooking liquid that will become the sauce. In
this way the starch has already been dispersed