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Mustard Sauce

A savory sauce made with butter, flour, stock, tarragon vinegar, English and French mustard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Tarragon and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 901 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Mustard Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

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

  2. Add the flour and cook until browned.

  3. Pour in the stock and stir well.

  4. Add the tarragon vinegar and mustards, mixing thoroughly.

  5. Simmer for 1-2 minutes, then 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. Tarragon + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together901 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. Tarragon + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,547 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + tarragontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together788 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour through the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the butter and stock.
Stock
Forms the liquid base that the roux thickens into a sauce.
English mustard
Adds sharp, pungent heat that gives the sauce its main bite.
French mustard
Adds milder tang and smoothness to the sauce's mustard flavour.

The step that matters

Cook the flour until browned. Cooking the butter and flour together gives a roux that thickens evenly. Stirring in the stock too early or cooking unevenly can leave lumps or a raw floury taste.

Swap the mustard

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, tarragon, 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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