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Robert Sauce for Roast Pork or Geese

A sauce made with butter, onion, flour, mushroom catsup, broth or water, pepper, salt, mustard, lemon juice, and optional vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Robert Sauce for Roast Pork or Geese

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter in a pint saucepan.

  2. Add the minced onion and cook until light brown.

  3. Stir in the flour and mushroom catsup.

  4. Add the broth or water, pepper, and salt; bring to a boil.

  5. Stir in the mustard and lemon juice or vinegar before serving.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

  3. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Butter
Enriches the sauce and carries the flavour of the onion.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the butter and liquid.
Broth or water
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens into a sauce.
Onion
Adds savoury, slightly browned flavour to the base.
Mushroom catsup
Adds deep savoury, umami flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Cook the onion until light brown. Browning the onion in butter builds savoury flavour before the liquid is added. Stopping too early leaves a raw, sharp taste, while going too far can make the sauce bitter.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Limefits about as well
  3. Cherryfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion, flour, mushroom, pepper, mustard, 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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