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Sauce

Mustard Sauce

A quick mustard sauce made with dry mustard, butter, salt, sugar, flour, vinegar or lemon juice, and boiling water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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. In a bowl, mix the dry mustard, butter, salt, sugar, flour, and vinegar or lemon juice thoroughly.

  2. Add the boiling water and stir over low heat until the mixture thickens like custard.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Mustard + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,066 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

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

Dry mustard
Provides the sharp, pungent flavour that defines the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it heats with the liquid, giving a custard-like body.
Butter
Adds fat for a smoother, richer mouthfeel in the finished sauce.
Vinegar or lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and sharpens the mustard.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the mustard and vinegar with gentle sweetness.

The step that matters

Stirring over low heat until it thickens. Flour thickens only when heated in liquid and its starch swells. Low heat with constant stirring thickens the sauce evenly without scorching or lumps forming.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Shallotfits about as well
  2. Mustardthe original
  3. Arrowrootfits about as well
  4. Beetrootfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, flour, 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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