Skip to main content
Sauce

Indian Mustard

A mustard-based sauce with shallots, vinegar, mushroom ketchup, anchovy sauce, and a stiff mustard-flour paste.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Ketchup and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Indian Mustard

Ingredients

Directions

Make the paste

  1. In a bowl, mix equal parts mustard and flour to form a stiff paste with boiling water.

  2. Add salt to the mixture.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, boil the shallots with vinegar, mushroom ketchup, and anchovy sauce for 10 minutes.

  2. Pour the hot mixture over the mustard and flour paste, stirring until smooth.

Store

  1. Store in bottles, adding a bruised shallot to each bottle.

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 + saucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Mustard + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together859 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Anchovy + saucetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Ketchup + anchovytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together479 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Shallot + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Mustard
Provides the sharp, pungent flavour that defines the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the paste so the mustard holds a stiff, smooth body.
Shallots
Add a mild, savoury onion-like aroma to the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens flavour and helps preserve the sauce.
Mushroom ketchup
Contributes deep savoury umami flavour.
Anchovy sauce
Adds salty, savoury depth to the sauce.

The step that matters

Pour the hot mixture over the paste while stirring. Adding the hot liquid gradually while stirring lets the flour starch hydrate evenly, so the sauce becomes smooth rather than lumpy.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, shallot, vinegar, mushroom, ketchup, anchovy, sauce):

  1. Horseradishfits about as well
  2. Chivefits about as well
  3. Mustardthe original
  4. Capsicumfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, shallot, vinegar, mushroom, ketchup, anchovy, sauce. 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

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