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Sauce Robert

A savory sauce made with butter, onions, flour, beef broth, mustard, vinegar, lemon, salt, and pepper, served over beefsteaks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Sauce Robert

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a frying pan over medium heat.

  2. Add the chopped onions and stir until the onions are brown, being careful not to burn them.

  3. Sift in the flour and stir it into the onions, then cook for a little longer.

  4. Add the beef broth, pepper, salt, mustard, vinegar, and lemon juice.

  5. Simmer the sauce for 10 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve hot over nicely broiled beefsteaks.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Mustard + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the broth into a smooth, lightly bodied sauce as it cooks.
Butter
Carries the onion flavour and forms the base for the flour roux.
Beef broth
Forms the liquid body of the sauce and carries its savoury flavour.
Onion
Adds savoury sweetness and aroma as it browns in the butter.
Prepared mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavour that balances the richness of the butter.

The step that matters

Stirring the onions until brown without burning. Browning the onions builds deep flavour, but scorched onions turn bitter and can taint the whole sauce. Medium heat and constant stirring give even colour.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, butter, flour, pepper, mustard, vinegar, onion):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Limefits about as well
  3. Mangofits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, butter, flour, pepper, mustard, vinegar, onion. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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