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Sauce

Robert Sauce, Used Mostly Eor Tore

A savory sauce made with onion, butter, mustard, flour, vinegar, lemon juice, cayenne pepper, salt, sugar, and bacon stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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, Used Mostly Eor Tore

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a pan, melt the butter and fry the diced onion until light brown.

  2. Add mustard, flour, vinegar, lemon juice, cayenne pepper, salt, sugar, and bacon stock.

  3. Boil the mixture well, then strain it through a fine cloth.

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. Lemon + peppertop 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. Mustard + peppertop 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

Onion
Frying until light brown adds savoury, slightly sweet flavour to the base.
Butter
Fat that carries flavour and helps soften and brown the onion.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the liquids.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances richness.
Bacon stock
Liquid base that contributes savoury, smoky depth.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture well. Flour needs sustained boiling to fully cook and thicken, which removes raw floury taste and sets the sauce's body.

Swap the onion

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

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

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