This from the Escoffier Cook Book, English translation , copyright 1941, Under the section Cold Sauces and Compound Butters, item 151 reads as follows: Manie Butter. "Knead, until perfectly combined, four oz. of butter and three oz. of sifted flour. This butter is used for quick binding in the Matelotes, etc. The sauce to which manie butter has been added should not boil too long if this can possibly be avoided, but long enough to cook the flour otherwise it would have a very disagreeable taste of uncooked flour." Item number 1037: Matelote With Red Wine "The fish used for Matelote are eel, carp, trench, bream, perch, etc. It may be prepared from many kinds of fish. Put the fish, cut into sections, into a saucepan. For two lbs. of it, add one minced onion, one herb bunch, two cloves of galic, one pint of red wine, a pinch of salt, and another of pepper or four peppercorns. Set to boil; add three tablespoons of heated and burnt brandy; cover the saucepan, and complete the cooking of the fish. This done, transfer the pieces to another saucepan; strain the cooking liquor, reduce it by a third, and thicken it with manie butter (consisting of one and one-half oz. of butter and two tablespoons of flour), cut into small pieces. When the binding has been properly done, pour the resulting sauce over the pieces of fish; heat, and serve in a earthenware timbale." The section on roux, which deals first with brown roux, is too lengthy to include here, however, the point of interest as I see it is when Escoffier talks about too high of heat in the beginning of the cooking process that burns the starch and two or three times as much roux is needed for thickening. "But this excess of roux in the sauce chokes it up without binding it, and prevents it from clearing. At the same time, the cellulose and the burnt starch lend a bitterness to the sauce of which no subequent treatment can rid it. From the above it follows that, starch being the only one from among the different constituents of flour which really affects the thickening of sauces, there would be considerable advantage in preparing roux either from a pure form of it, or from substances with kindred properties such as fecula, arrowroot, cornstarch, etc. It is only habit that causes flour to be still used as the binding element of roux, and, indeed, the hour is not so far distant when the advantages of the changes I propose will be better understood_ changes which have been already recommended by Favre in his dictionary. With a roux made of purest starch_in which case the volume of starch and butter would equal about half that of the flour and butter of the old method_and with a strong and succulent brown stock, a Spanish sauce or Espagnole may be made in one hour. And this sauce will be clearer, more brilliant, and better than that of the old processes, which needed three days at least to throw off the scum." So, Escoffier treated buerre manie and roux as two separate and unrelated things. The manie seems to be used when a sauce needs to be reduced before thickening, this conclusion being reaffirmed by the use of it in BDL's recipe. So here was Escoffier calling flour and butter roux "old style" a hundred years ago. If he saw us still doing it, I'm sure he'd be slapping his head and calling us whatever passed for "stupid" in his time.
