Roux French cuisine, but may be lard or vegetable oil in other cuisines. The roux is used in three of the five mother sauces of classical French cooking: béchamel sauce, velouté sauce, and espagnole sauce. In Cajun cuisine, roux is made with bacon fat or oil instead of butter and cooked to a medium or dark brown color, which lends much richness of flavor, albeit less thickening power. Central European cuisine often uses lard (in its rendered form) or more recently vegetable oil instead of butter for the preparation of roux, which is called in Slovak, in Czech, in Polish, ()
French cuisine cooks' guild regulations allowed for this movement. During the 16th and 17th centuries, French cuisine assimilated many new food items from the New World. Although they were slow to be adopted, records of banquets show Catherine de' Medici (1519–1589?) serving sixty-six turkeys at one dinner. The dish called cassoulet has its roots in the New World discovery of haricot beans, which are central to the dish's creation, but had not existed outside of the New World until its exploration by Christopher Columbus. Haute cuisine (, "high cuisine") has foundations during the 17th century with a chef named La Varenne. As