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Sauce Robart, for Beef Steaks, or Mutton Chops

A savory sauce made with gravy, herbs, mushrooms, shallots, butter, flour, stock, pepper, salt, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Sauce Robart, for Beef Steaks, or Mutton Chops

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce base

  1. In a saucepan, combine the gravy and heat it gently.

  2. In a separate pan, fry the parsley, mushrooms, and shallots in butter until soft.

  3. Dredge in flour and stir to combine.

Finish the sauce

  1. Moisten the mixture with stock and season with pepper and salt.

  2. Boil until it begins to thicken, then remove from heat.

  3. Stir in the beaten egg yolks continuously until well mixed.

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. Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Mushroom + shallottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

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

  4. Shallot + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Gravy
Provides the savoury meaty base that the sauce is built on.
Butter
Carries the aromatics and adds richness and a rounded flavour.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the liquid.
Stock
Adds liquid and body, loosening the thickened base into a sauce.
Egg yolks
Enrich the sauce and thicken it further when gently combined.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg yolks. Egg yolks can scramble and curdle if the sauce is too hot or stirred poorly. Stirring continuously while adding them keeps the yolks evenly dispersed and lets them thicken smoothly without cooking into lumps.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mushroom, shallot, butter, flour, pepper, egg):

  1. Capersfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Thymefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, shallot, butter, flour, pepper, egg. 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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