Skip to main content
Sauce

Mustard Sauce

A custard-like sauce made with sugar, vinegar, butter, eggs, and mustard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Vinegar and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,067 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Mustard Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Beat the eggs well in a bowl.

  2. Mix the sugar, vinegar, butter, and mustard with the beaten eggs.

  3. Pour the mixture into a new tin pail or basin.

Cook and finish

  1. Boil in water like custard until it reaches a creamy consistency, but not thick.

  2. Strain through a thin cloth to finish.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + mustardtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,424 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Thicken the sauce as they cook and give it a creamy body.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the sharp vinegar and mustard.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the sauce its tang.
Mustard
Provides the sharp, pungent flavour that defines the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat, giving the sauce a smoother, richer mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Boil in water like custard until creamy but not thick. Egg proteins thicken as they heat, but overheating can curdle them into lumps. Cooking gently in water and stopping at a creamy stage keeps the sauce smooth, which is why straining afterward helps catch any small set bits.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Mustardthe original
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Cucumberfits about as well
  4. Shallotfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, vinegar, butter, egg. 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.

More mustard sauce recipes

Tomato 24Horseradish 8 See all 119 →

You might also like

Mixed MustardMixed Mustard9 recipesWine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipes