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Sauce Robert, for Broils of Every Kind

A buttery, onion-based sauce with mustard, lemon, and vinegar, served hot over broiled meats.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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, for Broils of Every Kind

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Add the minced onion and stir until it turns light brown.

  3. Rub the browned flour into a little broth or water, then add salt and pepper.

  4. Stir in the port wine and the remaining broth or water into the saucepan.

  5. Bring to a boil, then add the mustard, lemon juice, and vinegar.

Serve

  1. Serve hot over broiled meats.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Mustard + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,816 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Browned flour
Thickens the sauce as it dissolves into the liquid.
Butter
Carries the onion's flavour and adds richness to the sauce.
Onion
Adds savoury sweetness and depth once browned.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and body to the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Rub the browned flour into the liquid. Flour clumps when added to hot liquid without first being smoothed into a little cold or room-temperature liquid. Mixing it into a small amount first creates a smooth slurry that thickens evenly when the rest of the liquid is added.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Figfits about as well
  2. Plumfits about as well
  3. Cherryfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion, flour, pepper, port wine, mustard, vinegar. 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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