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Sauce

To Make Robert Sauce

A sauce made from eels, bay leaf, onion, mace, mustard, and red wine, boiled and reduced to a glaze.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

To Make Robert Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine eels, bay leaf, sliced onion, mace, mustard, and red wine in a pot.

  2. Boil the mixture for 15 minutes.

  3. Strain the sauce and reduce it until it reaches a glaze consistency.

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. Onion + macetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

  3. Onion + red winetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  4. Mace + red winetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together381 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Mustard + red winetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together199 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Red wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavor to the sauce.
Onion
Contributes aromatic sweetness and flavor to the sauce base.
Mustard
Adds sharpness and a savory bite to the sauce.
Mace
Adds a warm, aromatic spice note to the sauce.

The step that matters

Reducing to glaze consistency. Reduction thickens the sauce by evaporating water and concentrates its flavors. Going too far can make it overly thick, intensely salty, or scorched on the bottom of the pan, so check it often.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, mustard, red wine):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, mustard, red wine. 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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