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Robert Sauce
Chop a peeled onion into one-fourth inch dice, and fry these in one tablespoonful of butter until browned; then add a teacupful of vinegar, and boil swiftly until the liquid has nearly evaporated. Then stir in one and one-half breakfast cupfuls of any cold brown gravy, or stir in first one tablespoonful of dry flour, and let it brown, and then mix in one and one-half breakfast cupfuls of boiling water. Season the sauce highly with pepper and salt, and simmer it slowly for fifteen minutes. Just prior to using it, stir in one dessertspoonful of mustard.
A classic mustard-and-onion brown sauce, written for a kitchen that always had brown gravy on hand. The one thing to get right is the mustard: it goes in off the heat, at the last moment, or the sauce turns bitter and loses its bite.
- The measuresA teacupful is usually reckoned at about 1/2 to 3/4 cup; a breakfast cupful at a full 8 to 10 oz, so one and one-half of them is roughly 1 1/2 to 2 cups. A dessertspoonful is about 2 teaspoons.
- VinegarPlain distilled vinegar will be harsh here. Use a wine vinegar, and note that the reduction is meant to go almost dry — what remains is a sharp onion glaze, not a puddle.
- "Cold brown gravy"This assumes a stockpot kitchen with leftover espagnole or roast gravy in the icebox. Good beef or veal stock, or a decent demi-glace loosened with water, stands in; the alternate route in the recipe (brown a tablespoon of flour, then add boiling liquid) is a small brown roux and works if you let the flour actually take color.
- The mustardMost likely a prepared paste is intended: Dijon-style, or English mustard mixed with water, rather than the sweetened yellow condiment. The recipe does not specify, and dry mustard is possible. Dijon is a close match, and it should not boil after it goes in.
- Onion cutQuarter-inch dice is deliberate: Robert is a sauce with visible onion in it, unlike a strained brown sauce. Brown it properly rather than sweating it; the color is half the flavor.
- Seasoning'Season highly' is meant literally, since the sauce is served in small quantity against rich meat. The recipe seasons before the fifteen-minute simmer; if you are standing in with a concentrated stock, hold back some salt until the end.
- Yield and servingAbout 1 1/2 cups. It is traditionally served with grilled pork chops, and does equally well with sausages, roast pork or grilled beef.
Sauce Robert is one of the oldest named sauces in the French repertoire — Rabelais praises it, and it is traditionally credited to a cook named Robert Vinot, though the attribution is legend rather than record. By Escoffier's time it had settled into a fixed formula: onion, vinegar or white wine, demi-glace, mustard at the finish. The version in The Cook Book is that formula written for an American hotel kitchen, with the telling concession that a cook without brown gravy may start from a spoonful of browned flour instead.