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Mustard Sauce

A thick sauce made with flour, butter, stock, mustard, vinegar, sugar, salt, and chopped hard boiled eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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. Brown the flour in butter or beef drippings over medium heat.

  2. Add the soup stock or beef extract in water and stir well.

  3. Mix in the mustard, vinegar, sugar, and salt to taste.

  4. Finally, fold in the chopped hard boiled eggs.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Flour and butter 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
Browned in fat, it thickens the sauce and adds a toasty, nutty flavour.
Butter or beef drippings
Fat that carries the browning and gives the sauce a rich flavour.
Soup stock or beef extract
Liquid base that hydrates the browned flour into a smooth, savoury sauce.
Mustard
Provides sharp, pungent flavour that defines the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the richness.
Hard boiled eggs
Chopped eggs add body and a soft, mild texture to the sauce.

The step that matters

Brown the flour in butter or beef drippings over medium heat.. Flour must cook in fat until evenly golden to remove raw starch taste and build nutty flavour. Browning too fast over high heat can scorch it, leaving bitter notes and uneven thickening.

Swap the mustard

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

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

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