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Sauce Rorert

A sauce made with onion, butter, flour, broth, pickles, mustard, cayenne pepper, vinegar, and capers, served with boiled beef.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 624 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Sauce Rorert

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, brown the sliced onion in butter.

  2. Stir in the flour until well combined.

  3. Add the broth or soup, chopped pickles, mustard, and cayenne pepper.

  4. Stir in the vinegar and capers if using.

  5. Let the sauce boil slowly, stirring occasionally.

Serve

  1. Serve the sauce with boiled beef.

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. Mustard + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together624 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  3. Flour + caperstop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,024 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Onion + caperstop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,381 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Onion
Browned in butter to add savory, sweet depth to the sauce base.
Flour
Thickens the broth into a smooth, coating sauce.
Broth or leftover soup
Forms the liquid body of the sauce and carries its flavor.
Pickles
Add tangy, sharp flavor and texture through the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, buttery sauce.

The step that matters

Let the sauce boil slowly, stirring occasionally. Flour needs to cook through at a simmer to lose its raw starchy taste and reach full thickness. Stirring prevents it from scorching on the bottom of the pan or forming lumps.

Swap the capers

The recipe marks capers as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, butter, flour, mustard, pepper, vinegar):

  1. Capersthe original
  2. Tarragonfits about as well
  3. Garlicfits less well
  4. Turmericfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, flour, mustard, pepper, 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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