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Sauce

Robert Sauce

A savory sauce made with stock, onions, butter, flour, mustard, sugar, cayenne, vinegar, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,259 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Robert Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the diced onions and stir until they begin to color.

  3. Stir in the flour and cook until it turns brown.

  4. Once it boils, add the stock and remaining ingredients.

  5. Simmer for five minutes, then skim and serve.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  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. Onion + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

Butter
Carries the onions and flour and adds richness to the sauce.
Onions
Add savory sweetness and body as they soften and color in the fat.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the butter and onions.
Stock
Forms the liquid base that the roux-thickened sauce is built on.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour until brown. Flour cooked in fat must be stirred constantly to brown evenly without scorching. Scorched flour gives a bitter taste and weakens thickening, so the color should be pale to deep brown with no black specks.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Radishfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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