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Sauce

Mustard Sauce

A simple sauce made from French mustard, vinegar, garlic vinegar, tarragon vinegar, and castor sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and tarragon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 901 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Mustard Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mix the French mustard with the vinegar in a bowl.

  2. Add a few drops of garlic vinegar and the tarragon vinegar.

  3. Stir in the castor sugar until well combined.

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 + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together901 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. Mustard + garlictop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  3. Vinegar + tarragontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,547 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Garlic + tarragontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together884 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

French mustard
Provides the sharp, pungent flavour that defines the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the sauce its tangy, sharp bite.
Castor sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the acidity of the vinegar.

Swap the garlic

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Dillfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Garlicthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mustard, vinegar, tarragon, sugar. 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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