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Sauce Robert

A savory sauce made with onions, butter, flour, gravy, mustard, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Sauce Robert

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a stewpan, brown the diced onions in the butter.

  2. Once they are deep yellow brown, add the flour and stir well.

  3. Pour in the beef or veal gravy and let it simmer for 15 minutes.

  4. Skim the sauce, then season with salt and pepper.

  5. Just before serving, mix in the prepared 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. Onion + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Browning in butter builds deep, sweet, savoury flavour that gives the sauce its character.
Butter
Carries the browning of the onions and adds richness to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the gravy into a smooth, lightly bodied sauce.
Beef or veal gravy
Forms the liquid base, supplying meaty savour and body.
Prepared mustard
Adds a sharp, tangy bite that brightens the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the onions. Onions need to reach deep yellow brown for the sauce to taste rich and savoury. Pale onions give a flat, sweet flavour, and stirring in the flour too early can leave it raw-tasting.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, flour, beef, 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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