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Sauce

Mustard Sauce

A quick 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. In a saucepan, combine the butter, brown roux, mustard, and a pinch of salt.

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

  3. Stir in the 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 fat for a rich, smooth mouthfeel and carries flavor.
Brown roux
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells in the hot liquid.
Mustard
Supplies sharp, pungent flavor that cuts through the richness of the butter.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens and balances the rich, thickened sauce.

The step that matters

Simmer after adding the boiling water. Simmering lets the roux's starch swell fully and thicken the liquid evenly, and cooks out any raw floury taste. Stopping early leaves the sauce thin or pasty-tasting.

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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