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Sauce Robert

A savory sauce made with butter, onions, flour, beef broth, mustard, vinegar, lemon, salt, and pepper, served hot over broiled beefsteaks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Sauce Robert

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a frying pan over medium heat.

  2. Add the chopped onions and stir until they brown, being careful not to burn them.

  3. Sift in the flour, stir, and cook for a little longer.

  4. Add the beef broth, pepper, salt, mustard, vinegar, and lemon juice.

  5. Simmer for 10 minutes.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce hot over nicely broiled beefsteaks.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Mustard + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  3. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Melts to form the fat base that carries the onion and flavour through the sauce.
Flour
Cooked into the fat to form a roux that thickens the broth into a smooth sauce.
Beef broth
Forms the liquid body of the sauce, carrying savoury beef flavour.
Onion
Browns in the butter to add sweetness and depth to the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, buttery sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the onions. Onions held over heat darken quickly, and burnt sugars turn the sauce bitter. Stirring steadily at medium heat lets them brown gently and build sweet, savoury flavour.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Limefits about as well
  3. Mangofits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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