Skip to main content
Sauce

Mustard Sauce

A savory sauce made with butter, flour, stock, French mustard, vinegar, dry English mustard, salt, sugar, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Mustard and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,067 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Mustard Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Make a roux by melting the butter in a saucepan and whisking in the flour.

  2. Gradually add the stock, stirring constantly.

  3. Stir in the French mustard, vinegar, dry English mustard, coarse sea salt, sugar, and cayenne pepper.

  4. Cook slowly for 40 minutes, stirring occasionally.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,066 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the butter and stock into a smooth, lightly bodied sauce.
Butter
Forms the fat base of the roux that begins the sauce.
French mustard
Adds the main mustard flavour and sharpness to the sauce.
Dry english mustard
Adds a hot, pungent mustard flavour that deepens the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce and balances the mustard.

The step that matters

Add the stock gradually while stirring. Adding liquid slowly while stirring lets the starch in the roux disperse evenly, preventing lumps and giving a smooth, properly thickened sauce.

Swap the mustard

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, vinegar, sugar, 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.

More mustard sauce recipes

Tomato 24Horseradish 8 See all 119 →

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