Skip to main content
Sauce

Sauce Robert

A buttery onion sauce with veal broth, tomato ketchup, and burnt sugar essence.

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

Why it works: Ketchup and sugar match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 260 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Sauce Robert

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

  1. In a pan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the onions and cover the pan to retain their strength.

Cook the onions

  1. Once boiling, add veal broth to cover the onions.

  2. Season to taste and cook until the onions are tender.

Finish the sauce

  1. Rub the mixture through a sieve.

  2. Stir in tomato ketchup and a little essence of burnt sugar for color.

  3. Bring to a boil and thicken the sauce.

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. Ketchup + sugartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together260 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  3. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Onion + vealtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,841 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 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

Onions
Provide the main body and sweetness as they soften and break down into the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavor as the onions begin to cook gently.
Veal broth
Serves as the cooking liquid that softens the onions and forms the sauce base.
Tomato ketchup
Adds acidity, sweetness and extra body to the finished sauce.
Essence of burnt sugar
Gives the sauce a deep brown color and a slight caramel note.

The step that matters

Bring to a boil and thicken the sauce. Boiling evaporates water and concentrates the flavors, so the sauce thickens and tastes richer. Stopping too early leaves it thin and dilute, while the sieved onion pulp gives it body as it reduces.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, butter, veal, ketchup, sugar):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, veal, ketchup, sugar. 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.

You might also like

Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipesDutch SauceDutch Sauce74 recipes