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Sauce Robert

A brown butter and onion sauce with mustard, vinegar, and lemon, served with steaks or chops.

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 ↓

Sauce Robert

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat until it begins to brown.

  2. Add the diced onions and fry until they are brown but not burnt.

  3. Stir in the flour and fry for another minute.

  4. Add the gravy, pepper, and salt, then simmer gently for 10 minutes and skim off any fat.

Finish and serve

  1. Before serving, mix in the mustard, vinegar, and lemon juice, ensuring the sauce does not boil to prevent curdling.

  2. Serve the sauce around steaks or chops, garnished with parsley and lemon.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Mustard + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,816 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Browns in the pan to give the sauce a nutty, rich flavour and carries the onions.
Onions
Browning them adds sweetness and savoury depth to the sauce.
Flour
Cooked with the butter, it thickens the gravy into a smooth sauce.
Gravy
Forms the savoury base of the sauce and is simmered until it reduces.
Prepared mustard
Adds sharpness and a little heat that balances the richness of the butter.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and lifts the savoury flavours.

The step that matters

Adding the mustard, vinegar and lemon juice. Acidic ingredients added to a hot, thickened sauce can cause it to curdle or separate. Keeping the sauce below a boil and adding these at the end keeps it smooth.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, flour, pepper, mustard, vinegar, lemon. 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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