Robert
and his sauce. Who is this Robert? Mr.
Hayward, who is generally accurate, and always amusing, has had the bad luck to say that it was invented by M. Robert, one of the leading cooks under the First Empire. These cooks never invented anything so simple as the Sauce Robert-which is so ancient that Rabelais describes it as necessary for "ducks, rabbits, roasts, fresh pork, poached eggs, salt hake, and a thousand other viands." It is, indeed, nearly three hundred years older than Rabelais - being mentioned by the French cook Taillevent, in the middle of the thirteenth century. It is older even than Taillevent, and nobody can tell how old it is. For the fact is, that Robert is a myth. It is the corruption of an English name which the French did not understand. There was then a very free interchange of French and English. Half of France belonged to England; and as there were French names of dishes in England which the English did not understand, so there were English names of dishes in France which the French did not understand. The French had their brouet de chevreuil; and the English had their Roebroth and Roebrewet, for which there were a number of varying receipts. One of these receipts the French picked up; and with that glorious faculty of altering names which has never failed them since they appear in history, they thought its name must be the same as that of their famous Norman duke, and they called it Robert. In its original idea Robert was Roebrewet-that is, Roebuck sauce. In the present day there is to be found in cookery books a receipt Robin Redbreast for Roebuck or Chevreuil sauce, as well as for Sauce Robert. It may be observed that roebuck is not once mentioned by Rabelais among the viands for which the Sauce Robert is necessary; modern taste has confined it almost exclusively to pork and to goose.
For the Sauce Robert there is a great variety of receipts; and the later French cooks have a strong tendency to drench it with vinegar and wine, and to make it distinctly a sharp sauce. Beauvilliers' receipt, which is much the best, is very chary of acid. See the introductory chapter; and here only note this much further that the name Sauce Robert is, according to the above explanation, tautological: Robert ought to be enough.
Beauvilliers' Receipt for Robert. - Cut six large onions -or even more into dice, dredge them with flour, and pass them in butter till they are of a fine brown tint. Moisten them with a very little broth, and let them cook. Add salt, mignonette pepper, and last of all French mustard; after which it ought not to go to the fire, as to cook mustard spoils it. In lieu of French mustard use English mixed with tarragon vinegar.
ROBIN REDBREAST is a bird of the same order as the famous fig-eater-or becafico. "The robin redbreast," says Mr. Hayward, "is remarkable for a delicate bitter flavour; but as our ingenuous recommendation of him as an eatable commodity has been occasionally regarded as symptomatic of a latent tendency to cannibalism, it may be as well to state that the popular notion of his amiability, which rests upon the apocryphal story of the Children in the Wood, is altogether a mistake. Ornithologists are agreed that he is one of the most quarrelsome of birds; and his loneliness is in fact the natural result of his pugnacity." Mr. Hayward, besides being a witty writer, is, when he likes, a close reasoner; and he cannot but see that if the friendliness of the Redbreast for mankind will not save Roman Cookery him from the spit, he is practically protected by his loneliness. There is not enough of him to make it worth any one's while to put him on a dish.
The essay is longer than the recipe, but Beauvilliers' Robert is a real working formula: browned onions, a little broth, mustard stirred in off the heat. The quantities of butter, flour and broth are left to the cook, which is normal for the period.
- The hinge: mustard never sees the fireThe recipe says it outright and it is the one rule that matters. Heat drives off the volatile compounds that give mustard its pungency and leaves a flat, faintly bitter sauce. Pull the pan off the heat, let it stop bubbling, then stir the mustard in.
- Six large onionsPerhaps 2 to 3 lb, and the receipt allows "or even more." No yield or number of servings is given; scale down if you want less.
- "Pass them in butter"Sweat and brown in butter over moderate heat. No quantity is given; 3 to 4 tablespoons for six onions is about right, and the browning wants twenty to thirty minutes, not five. The colour of the onions is the colour of the finished sauce.
- Dredging with flourA light dusting, perhaps two tablespoons for this quantity, tossed with the onions before they brown. It thickens the broth later and is not meant to make a roux you can see.
- "A very little broth"Enough to moisten and let the onions stew down, a cup or slightly less, added in stages. Robert is a thick, almost spoonable onion sauce, not a gravy.
- Mignonette pepperCoarsely cracked pepper, traditionally white, sometimes with a little coriander. Crush peppercorns under a pan base rather than using fine ground.
- French mustard, and the English substituteFrench mustard here means smooth Dijon-style prepared mustard, milder and less acidic than what you might reach for. The alternative given is English mustard powder slaked with tarragon vinegar, which is considerably hotter; start with half as much and taste.
- Acid restraintThe author's point about later cooks drenching Robert in vinegar and wine is a real distinction. This version gets all its sharpness from the mustard, so resist the urge to add vinegar to the pan.
Kettner's Book of the Table (1877), generally attributed to the journalist E. S. Dallas rather than to the restaurateur whose name it carries, is as much argument as cookery book, and this entry is a good sample of its method: correct a rival writer, reach for Rabelais, then hand over one short receipt. The correction is sound in outline. Sauce Robert long predates the Napoleonic cook Dallas's rival credited, and Rabelais does list it as the sauce necessary to a long string of dishes. The dating is looser than it sounds: Taillevent belongs to the fourteenth century, not the middle of the thirteenth, and the confident derivation from an English "roebrewet" is Victorian folk etymology, not documented fact. Other equally untestable stories attach the name to a cook, to Duke Robert, or simply to a common given name. What is not in doubt is the sauce itself, an onion and mustard preparation which by this author's own account modern taste had confined almost exclusively to pork and goose, and the recipe here comes from Antoine Beauvilliers, whose L'Art du cuisinier (1814) codified a good deal of what Paris restaurants had been cooking since before the Revolution.