Skip to main content
Sauce

Mustard Sauce

A thickened sauce made with stock, flour, mustard, ketchup, Worcestershire sauce, salt, and pepper, served with boiled meats.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Ketchup and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Mustard Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, combine stock and flour to thicken.

  2. Add salt and pepper, then stir in mustard, ketchup, and Worcestershire sauce.

  3. Beat well until smooth and serve with boiled meats.

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. Ketchup + saucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Mustard + tomatotop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,482 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 that the flour thickens and the other flavorings blend into.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells in the hot liquid, giving body.
Prepared mustard
Supplies the sharp, pungent flavor that defines the sauce.
Tomato ketchup
Adds a little sweetness and acidity to balance the sharpness of the mustard.
Worcestershire sauce
Adds savory, tangy depth that rounds out the mustard.

The step that matters

Combining the stock and flour. Flour must be fully dispersed in the liquid before heating, or it clumps. Starch granules swell and thicken the sauce only when they are evenly mixed and the liquid is hot enough.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, pepper, mustard, ketchup, sauce. 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