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Mustard Sauce

A savory sauce made from beef broth, chives, shallot, green onions, dry mustard, vinegar, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Chive and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 450 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Mustard Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Remove 1 pint of broth after boiling the beef for two hours.

  2. Combine the broth, chives, shallot, and green onions in a saucepan.

  3. Bring to a boil and simmer for 30 minutes.

  4. Stir in the dry mustard, vinegar, salt, and pepper.

  5. Keep the sauce hot until serving with the 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. Chive + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Shallot + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together859 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Chive + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together587 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Chive + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,907 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Beef broth
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavour of the sauce.
Dry mustard
Adds sharp, pungent heat that gives the sauce its characteristic bite.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the rich broth.
Shallot
Contributes mild onion aroma that deepens as it simmers.

The step that matters

Stir in the dry mustard and vinegar after simmering. Dry mustard's pungency develops when mixed with liquid, but prolonged boiling can dull its sharpness and the acid can be lost to evaporation. Adding them near the end keeps the heat and tang bright.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, chive, shallot, mustard, vinegar, pepper):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Welsh onionfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, chive, shallot, mustard, vinegar, pepper. 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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