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Sauce Robert

A French sauce made with butter, onions, flour, gravy, mustard, vinegar, lemon, and garnished with parsley and lemon wedges.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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.

  2. Add the diced onions and fry until brown, being careful not to burn them.

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

  4. Add the gravy, salt, and pepper, and simmer gently for 10 minutes.

  5. Skim the sauce to remove any impurities.

Finish and serve

  1. Before serving, stir in the mustard, vinegar, and lemon juice.

  2. Pour the sauce around steaks or chops, garnishing with fried 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
Carries the onions and flour, adding richness and a nutty flavor to the sauce.
Onions
Browning them adds deep savory flavor and sweetness to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the fat and gravy.
Gravy
Forms the sauce base, providing meaty savory flavor and liquid.
Mustard
Adds sharp pungency that balances the richness of the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and cuts through richness.

The step that matters

Fry the onions until brown without burning them. Browning builds deep, savory flavor through the Maillard reaction, but burnt onions turn bitter and can spoil the whole sauce.

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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