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Sauce Robert, or Carriers Sauce

A cold sauce made from browned onions, ham, consommé, mustard, vinegar, and oil, served with pork.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,259 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Sauce Robert, or Carriers Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce base

  1. Slice the onions and place them in a saucepan with peppercorns, salt, ham, and butter.

  2. Cook over medium heat until the onions are well browned.

  3. Add the consommé and plain sauce, and bring to a boil.

  4. Rub the mixture through a fine sieve.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in mustard, vinegar, and oil.

  2. Serve cold in a sauceboat with pork cutlets or cold pork.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sauce + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,120 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Onion + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Ham + mustardtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together747 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Browning them builds the deep, savory flavour that forms the base of the sauce.
Butter
Fat that helps the onions brown and carries flavour through the sauce.
Consommé
Adds liquid and savory body, so the sauce can be strained to a smooth consistency.
Mustard
Adds sharpness and a pungent note that cuts the richness of the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances its richness.
Oil
Adds fat that gives the finished sauce a smooth, glossy texture.

The step that matters

Cook the onions until well browned. Browning through the Maillard reaction develops the deep flavour the sauce depends on. Pale onions give a flat, sweet-tasting base, so the colour should be fully developed before liquid is added.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Lettucefits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, butter, sauce, 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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