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 traditi ...

, which in turn is derived from espagnole sauce, one of the five mother sauces in French cuisine ( béchamel, velouté, espagnole, sauce tomate, and hollandaise). 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 Carême (; 8 June 1783 or 178412 January 1833), known as Antonin Carême, was a leading French chef of the early 19th century. Carême was born in Paris to a poor family and, when still a child, worked in a cheap restaurant. La ...

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 often contains chopped Pickled cucumber, pickles or piccalilli. It can also contain horseradish, paprika, Anchovies ...

—were present in much older cookbooks, such as François Massialot'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 ( , , ; 12 January 162816 May 1703) was a 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, published in his ...

's canonical telling of

Sleeping Beauty "Sleeping Beauty" (, or ''The Beauty Sleeping in the Wood''; , or ''Little Briar Rose''), also titled in English as ''The Sleeping Beauty in the Woods'', is a fairy tale about a princess curse, cursed by an evil fairy to suspended animation in fi ...

(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

{{portal bar, Food Brown sauces French sauces