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ROBERT SAUCE (M. Ude's way)
Cut some onions into small dice, fry them of a fine brown, moisten them with some Espagnole (SPANISH SAUCE), or dust them with flour, and moisten with veal gravy. Skim it, that the sauce may look bright; put in a little pepper and salt, and just before you send up mix a spoonful of mustard.
A brown onion-and-mustard sauce given in shorthand, as Ude gave it to cooks who already knew the base sauces. Two decisions carry the dish: how far you take the onions, and the fact that the mustard goes in off the heat.
- Mustard last, no boilingMustard last -- Ude has the mustard mixed in "just before you send up", so it is never boiled: boiled mustard turns bitter and loses its pungency. Stir it in at the last moment and serve promptly.
- Espagnole, or the shortcutEspagnole is the classic brown sauce: a brown roux moistened with brown veal stock and a mirepoix, simmered and skimmed for hours. The alternative Ude offers is the shortcut, dusting the fried onions with flour and moistening with veal gravy, which gives a light brown sauce in minutes.
- Veal gravyNot gravy in the modern pan-drippings sense but a reduced brown veal stock. A good unsalted brown stock stands in; if you use a commercial stock, hold back on the salt until the sauce has reduced.
- QuantitiesNone are given here, as is common in the sauce recipes of the period. As a working scale: two medium onions, 1 tbsp butter, 1 tbsp flour, about 400 ml stock and 1 to 2 tsp Dijon or strong French mustard, which makes roughly 300 ml of finished sauce, enough for four.
- "Of a fine brown"The onions want a genuine even brown, not a pale gold, over moderate heat with frequent stirring. Ten to fifteen minutes is realistic; burnt fragments will make the finished sauce bitter and cloudy.
- Skimming for brightnessOne standard way is to hold the pan slightly off centre on the burner so the sauce simmers on one side only; the fat and scum collect on the quiet side and can be lifted off. Ude specifies no method, only the result: a sauce that looks bright rather than greasy.
- Mustard to useMost likely a sharp, plain mustard of the kind then sold as French; Dijon is a reasonable modern match, and sweetened or wholegrain styles shift the balance of the sauce.
- ServingClassically sent up with grilled or roast pork and pork chops. It also suits any fatty grilled meat that wants a sharp brown sauce.
Sauce Robert is among the oldest sauces still made by name in French cooking; it is name-checked by Rabelais in the sixteenth century, though the identity of the Robert it honours is guesswork rather than record. Louis-Eustache Ude, whose version this is, was a French chef who worked in England in the early nineteenth century, wrote The French Cook (1813), and later ran the kitchen at Crockford's club in London, where he was one of the best-paid cooks in the country. His terse style, assuming the reader already keeps Espagnole to hand, is characteristic of a professional writing for other professionals.