Skip to main content
Main

Sauce Robert

A buttery onion sauce with stock, vinegar, mustard, and optional curry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Sauce Robert

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and chop the onions into slices.

  2. In a stewpan, melt the butter and add the onions. Cover and shake occasionally.

  3. Cook for about 15 minutes until the onions are soft.

Make the sauce

  1. Sprinkle flour over the onions and stir until browned.

  2. Add hot stock, salt, pepper, vinegar, and mustard. Stir well.

  3. For a spicy flavor, add a pinch of curry powder if desired.

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. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Softened slowly in butter, they provide the sweet, savoury base of the sauce.
Butter
Fat that softens the onions and carries their flavour into the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the stock and, once browned, adds nutty colour and depth.
French mustard
Adds sharp, tangy flavour that cuts through the richness of the sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour until browned. Flour browns quickly once it meets the hot onions, so it can scorch and turn bitter if left unattended. Stirring constantly keeps the colour even and the flavour clean before the stock is added.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Radishfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes