Sauce Robert is a brown mustard sauce and one of the ''small sauces'', or compound sauces, derived from the classic French

demi-glace Demi-glace (, 'half glaze') is a rich brown sauce in French cuisine used by itself or as a base for other sauces. The term comes from the French word ''glace'', which, when used in reference to a sauce, means "icing" or "glaze." It is traditio ...

, which in turn is derived from espagnole sauce, one of the five

mother sauce In French cuisine, the mother sauces (french: sauces mères), also known as in French, are a group of sauces upon which many other sauces"daughter sauces" or are based. Different sets and classifications of mother sauces have been proposed sinc ...

s in French cuisine ( béchamel, velouté,

espagnole Espagnole sauce () is a basic brown sauce, and is one of Auguste Escoffier's five mother sauces of classic French cooking. Escoffier popularized the recipe, and his version is still followed today.Escoffier (1903), ''Le Guide culinaire'', Editions ...

, sauce tomate, and

hollandaise Hollandaise sauce ( or ; ), also called Dutch sauce, is a mixture of egg yolk, melted butter, and lemon juice (or a white wine or vinegar reduction). It is usually seasoned with salt, and either white pepper or cayenne pepper. It is well known ...

). Sauce Robert is made from chopped onions cooked in butter without color, a reduction of white wine, pepper, an addition of

and is finished with mustard. It is suited to red meat, specifically pork, typically grilled pork.Escoffier, p. 31

History

Sauce Robert is one of the earliest compound sauces on record. Of the 78 compound sauces systematized by

Marie-Antoine Carême Marie Antoine (Antonin) Carême (; 8 June 178412 January 1833) was a French chef and an early practitioner and exponent of the elaborate style of cooking known as '' grande cuisine'', the "high art" of French cooking: a grandiose style of cookery ...

in the early 19th century, only two—sauce Robert and

remoulade Rémoulade (; ) is a cold sauce. Although similar to tartar sauce, it is often more yellowish, sometimes flavored with curry, and sometimes contains chopped pickles or piccalilli. It can also contain horseradish, paprika, anchovies, capers an ...

—were present in much older cookbooks, such as Massaliot's ''Le Cuisinier Roial et Bourgeois'', from 1691.Sokolov, Raymond. "The Saucier's Apprentice", ''A Brief History of French Sauces''. pages 5–7. Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. 1976. In

Charles Perrault Charles Perrault ( , also , ; 12 January 1628 – 16 May 1703) was an iconic French author and member of the Académie Française. He laid the foundations for a new literary genre, the fairy tale, with his works derived from earlier folk tales ...

's canonical telling of

Sleeping Beauty ''Sleeping Beauty'' (french: La belle au bois dormant, or ''The Beauty in the Sleeping Forest''; german: Dornröschen, or ''Little Briar Rose''), also titled in English as ''The Sleeping Beauty in the Woods'', is a fairy tale about a princess ...

(1696), the ogress Queen Mother insists that Sleeping Beauty and her children be served to her à la sauce Robert. A version of sauce Robert also appears in Francois-Pierre de la Varenne's ''Le Cuisinier François'' (1651), the founding text of modern French cuisine.

Footnotes

External links

A recipe for Sauce Robert
{{portal bar, Food Brown sauces French sauces