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Sauce

Mustard Sauce

A sauce made with mustard flour, milk, salt, vinegar, flour, baked flour, butter, and boiling water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Mustard Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mustard base

  1. In a bowl, mix 1 teaspoon of mustard flour with a little milk and salt.

  2. Gradually add more milk and vinegar, stirring until the mixture thickens.

Make the roux and finish

  1. In a separate pan, melt 3 oz. of butter.

  2. Stir in 1 teaspoon of flour and 2 teaspoons of baked flour.

  3. Add ⅓ cup of boiling water and cook until thickened.

  4. Finish with 1 teaspoon of vinegar.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mustard + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,066 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Mustard flour
Supplies the sharp, pungent mustard flavour that defines the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks in the melted butter.
Baked flour
Adds additional thickening power and a toasted, nutty note.
Butter
Provides fat for richness and a smooth mouthfeel, and carries the flour.
Milk
Forms the creamy liquid base that gives the sauce body.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and cuts the richness.

The step that matters

Adding the boiling water to the flour and butter. Flour must be cooked in the fat and the liquid added gradually while stirring. Adding liquid too fast or unevenly traps dry flour and causes lumps, so the sauce stays smooth only when the mixture is stirred continuously as it thickens.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, milk, vinegar, butter):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Potatofits about as well
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, milk, vinegar, butter. 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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