Name: Mustard Sauce
Ingredients: 1 pint beef broth; 1 bunch chives, peeled and chopped; 1 shallot, peeled and chopped; 2-3 small green onions, peeled and chopped; 1 tablespoon dry mustard; ½ cup vinegar; Salt and pepper to taste

Why it works: Chive and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 450 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Mustard Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

After boiling the beef for two hours, remove 1 pint of the broth.
In a saucepan, combine the chives, shallot, green onions, and broth.
Bring to a boil and simmer for 30 minutes.
Stir in the dry mustard, vinegar, and season with salt and pepper.
Keep the sauce hot until ready to serve with the beef.

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.

Chive + shallottop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together450 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Shallot + mustardtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together859 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Chive + mustardtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together587 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Chive + oniontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,907 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef broth: Forms the liquid base that carries the flavour of the sauce.
Dry mustard: Adds sharp, pungent heat that defines the sauce.
Vinegar: Adds acidity that brightens and balances the rich broth.
Shallot: Contributes mild onion aroma that mellows during simmering.

Swap the onion

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

Horseradishfits better
Lettucefits better
Welsh onionfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, chive, shallot, mustard, vinegar, 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.