Cooking In European cooking, a mixture of butter and flour called a roux is used to thicken liquids to make stews or sauces. In Asian cooking, a similar effect is obtained from a mixture of rice or corn starch and water. These techniques rely on the properties of starches to create simpler mucilaginous saccharides during cooking, which causes the familiar thickening of sauces. This thickening will break down, however, under additional heat. Types of fat include vegetable oils, animal products such as butter and lard, as well as fats from grains, including corn and flax oils. Fats are used in a
Sponge cake places where European patisserie has spread, including the Anglo-Jewish "plava", Italian génoise, the Portuguese pão-de-ló, and the possibly ancestral Italian "pan di Spagna" ("Spanish bread"). Derivatives of the basic sponge cake idea include the American chiffon cake and the Latin American tres leches cake. The essential ingredients are eggs, fat (often butter), sugar, and flour. An authentic British sponge cake is made by first mixing the fat with the sugar and then beating the eggs with the sugar-fat mix until the mixture is light and creamy, then carefully sieving and folding in the flour. Depending on the recipe, the flour