"Roux" is word that everyone seems to know but me. To the best of my recollection, "roux" had never crossed my personal threshold until last week -- perhaps because I have never taken any special interest in fine cuisine. I've now enlightened myself, but at the cost of blundering into a bewildering etymological thicket.
"Roux," to reprise the obvious, is "a mixture of flour and fat cooked together and used to thicken sauces.... Butter or lard are commonly used fats." But why "roux," with its excrescent French x? Un nom étrange. Roux, if I have it right, means brown, or more precisely, reddish brown (as opposed to "brun" or "marron." In the case of the sauce, roux is an abbreviated version of "beurre roux," or brown butter and, curiously, comes unbuttered into English as simply "roux." Roux derives from Latin russus or ruber, reddish, both of which ancient words originate in the same Indo-European root. I've now learned of a kind of surgery called a Roux-en-Y, probably pronounced "ruin why," which is a kind of "anastomosis"-- or gastric bypass -- in which blood or intestinal vessels are configured into a Y shape. But although one may suspect so, this "roux" has nothing to do with sauces, thank goodness, but is named for the Swiss physician who originated the surgery, César Roux. I suspect that Roux's roux does not descend from ruber but from rufus, red-headed, as in William II, aka William Rufus.
But then there's the English word "rue." I know it as the common wildflower that we allow to grow in our waterfall garden, and there are cultivated versions as well. This rue comes to English through French and from Latin ruta. The other English rue, as in "rue the day" is, as one might expect, of entirely different origin deriving from Old English hreow -- "grief, repentance, sorrow, regret, penitence."
Exactly like Vivian de St Vrain, William Shakespeare was not familiar with "roux" but he knew and used both rues. Perdita offers the flowery one to Camillo and Polixenes: "Reverend sirs,/For you there's rosemary and rue; these keep/ Seeming and savor all the winter long." Ophelia, in her madness, also distributes rue, known also as herb of grace: "There's fennel for you, and columbines. There's rue for you, and here's some for me. We may call it herb of grace o' Sundays. O, you must wear your rue with a difference." The botanical rue is referenced by the poetical gardener in Richard II; "in this place/I'll set a bank of rue, sour herb of grace:/ Rue, even for ruth, here shortly shall be seen,/ In the remembrance of a weeping queen." The pun on rue/ruth is etymologically interesting. Ruth means sorrow and it is possible that ruth is to rue as truth is to true; that is to say, formed by analogy.
It would be wrong to leave the subject of roux/rue without a mention of rubaboo, "an American stew or porridge of French and Métis people, consisting of bear grease along with peas, corn and other vegetables." Rubaboo blends "roux" with the Algonquian word aboo, which, I have been reliably informed, means soup and is therefore an unusual, perhaps even unique IE + Algonquian formation.
https://academic.oup.com/crj
A new academic discipline? I just discovered this.
https://johnshopkins.academia.edu/JenniferStager
Posted by: Jimmie Simmons | April 18, 2023 at 10:28 AM