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Sauce

Mustard Sauce

A simple sauce made from stock, shallots, mustard, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 859 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Mustard Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, combine stock, shallots, salt, and pepper.

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

  3. Stir in the mustard until well combined.

  4. Use as needed.

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  3. Shallot + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and carries the other flavors.
Shallots
Add mild, sweet onion flavor that softens and mellows during simmering.
Mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavor that gives the sauce its characteristic bite.

The step that matters

Stirring in the mustard. Mustard's pungent flavor fades with prolonged heat, so it is added after simmering and stirred until fully dispersed for even flavor throughout the sauce.

Swap the shallot

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

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Broccolifits better
  4. Shallotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, mustard. 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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