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Sauce

Sauce Robert

A French sauce made with onions, butter, white Burgundy wine, espagnole sauce, meat glaze, and mustard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,259 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Sauce Robert

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Combine the chopped onions in a saucepan and remove any tough parts.

  2. Add the butter and sauté until golden brown.

  3. Pour in the white Burgundy wine and reduce until syrupy.

  4. Add the espagnole sauce and simmer for 20 minutes, skimming off any foam.

Finish and serve

  1. Place the saucepan in a double boiler to keep warm.

  2. Bring the sauce to a boil and stir in the meat glaze and mustard just before serving.

  3. Mix well and serve.

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. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  2. Sauce + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,120 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Meat + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together855 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Soften and sweeten as they brown, adding savory depth to the sauce base.
Butter
Carries the browning of the onions and adds richness and a nutty, golden flavor.
White burgundy wine
Reduced to a syrup, it concentrates acidity and aroma that balance the rich sauce.
Espagnole sauce
Provides the main body and brown, savory base of the sauce.
Meat glaze
Adds concentrated meaty flavor and gloss, deepening the sauce's savoriness.
Mustard
Adds sharpness and a little heat that cut through the richness of the sauce.

The step that matters

Reducing the wine until syrupy. Reducing concentrates the wine's acidity and aroma. If it is under-reduced, the finished sauce tastes thin and sharp; if over-reduced, it turns bitter and sticky.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, wine, sauce, meat, mustard):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Lettucefits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, wine, sauce, meat, mustard. 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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