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Sauce

Robert Sauce

A sauce made from onions, butter, Spanish sauce, stock, pepper, vinegar, and mustard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,259 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Robert Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

  1. Chop the onions finely.

  2. Fry the onions in butter until yellowish-brown, stirring constantly.

  3. Drain the onions and add them to the Spanish sauce.

Make the sauce

  1. Add stock to the sauce and simmer gently for 20 minutes.

  2. Add a pinch of pepper.

  3. Strain the sauce.

  4. Mix vinegar and mustard in a cup and stir into 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. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Sauce + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,120 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Soften and sweeten as they fry, adding savoury depth to the sauce.
Butter
Carries the frying of the onions and adds richness.
Spanish sauce
Forms the base body of the sauce that the other ingredients are added to.
Stock
Thins the sauce and adds savoury flavour during simmering.
Mustard
Adds sharpness and pungent flavour to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Fry the onions until yellowish-brown. Stirring constantly keeps the onions from scorching, since burnt sugars taste bitter. Gentle, even browning develops sweet, savoury flavour that carries through the sauce.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sauce, pepper, vinegar, mustard):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sauce, pepper, vinegar, mustard. 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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