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Sauce

Mustard Sauce

A quick mustard sauce made with butter, brown roux, mustard, vinegar, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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. Combine butter, brown roux, mustard, and a pinch of salt in a saucepan.

  2. Add ½ cup boiling water and simmer for a few minutes.

  3. Stir in vinegar and cook for an additional minute.

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 + mustardtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,003 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Butter + vinegartop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,513 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the sauce.
Brown roux
Thickens the sauce as the starch swells in the hot liquid.
Mustard
Supplies the sharp, pungent flavour that defines the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the richness of the butter.

The step that matters

Adding the boiling water to the roux. Starch in the roux thickens when heated in liquid, and it can clump if the hot water is added too quickly without stirring. Adding the water gradually while stirring keeps the sauce smooth.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Mustardthe original
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Onionfits about as well
  4. Cucumberfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, 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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