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Mustard Sauce

A quick mustard sauce made with wheat meal, butter, mustard, vinegar, sugar, salt, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

Make the sauce

  1. Brown the wheat meal with the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the mustard, vinegar, sugar, and salt.

  3. Simmer the mixture for a few minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve warm.

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. Mustard + wheattop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together134 recipes

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

  3. Wheat + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 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

Wheat meal
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells in the liquid.
Butter
Adds richness, and browning it gives a nutty aroma.
Mustard
Provides the sharp, pungent flavour that defines the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances richness.
Sugar
Softens the sharpness of mustard and vinegar with mild sweetness.

The step that matters

Browning the wheat meal in butter. Cooking the flour in fat until it turns golden develops nutty flavour and removes raw starchy taste. Stop before it darkens or burns, since scorched flour turns bitter and spoils the sauce.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (wheat, butter, vinegar, sugar):

  1. Mustardthe original
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Cucumberfits about as well
  4. Sweet potatofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against wheat, butter, vinegar, 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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