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Sauce

Robert Sauce

A savory sauce made with onions, flour, stock, vinegar, butter, mushrooms, anchovy paste, and tomato.

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

Robert Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Heat butter in a saucepan until brown.

  2. Add sliced onions and brown them.

  3. Stir in the brown stock until smooth.

  4. Add remaining ingredients and simmer slowly for 30 to 40 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Pass sauce through a fine sieve, rubbing pulp through.

  2. Reheat sauce before serving.

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. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  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. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Browned in the pan to add a nutty, rich flavour to the base.
Onions
Browned to add sweetness and depth of flavour to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the butter and stock.
Brown stock
Forms the liquid body of the sauce and carries the other flavours.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, savoury sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the butter and onions. Browning builds the sauce's colour and roasted flavour through the Maillard reaction. Pale or burnt fat gives a flat or bitter taste, so colour should be even and golden, not dark.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, pepper, mustard, vinegar, butter, mushroom, anchovy):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, pepper, mustard, vinegar, butter, mushroom, anchovy. 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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