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Sauce

LA Sauce Robert

A sauce made from onions, veal gravy, pepper, salt, and mustard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

LA Sauce Robert

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Finely chop the onions.

  2. Fry the onions until they are a fine brown.

  3. Moisten the onions with veal gravy and skim off any fat.

  4. Add a little pepper and salt to taste.

  5. Just before serving, mix in 1 tablespoon of mustard.

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. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Onion + vealtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,841 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Veal + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,049 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Fried until brown, they build the sauce's savory, slightly sweet base flavor.
Veal gravy
Moistens the onions and forms the liquid body of the sauce.
Mustard
Adds a sharp, tangy note that brightens the rich gravy.

The step that matters

Fry the onions until fine brown. Browning the onions develops deep, roasted flavors through the Maillard reaction. Pale onions give a flat, sweet taste, while over-darkened ones turn bitter.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, veal, pepper):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, veal, pepper. 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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