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Roman Sauce

A sauce of water, milk, flour, eggs, butter, vinegar, salt, and pepper served over sliced hard-boiled eggs and boiled fish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Roman Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine water and milk and heat until scalding.

  2. Mix flour with a small amount of cold water until smooth, then stir into the hot mixture.

  3. Add the beaten and strained eggs, seasoning with salt, pepper, butter, and vinegar.

Serve

  1. Boil the eggs until hard, then slice them.

  2. Pour the sauce over the sliced eggs and serve with boiled fish.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the hot liquid into a smooth, pourable sauce.
Eggs
Add body and richness, setting lightly as the sauce is heated.
Butter
Adds fat for a smooth, rich mouthfeel and flavor.
Milk
Provides creaminess and a mild sweetness to the sauce.
Hard-boiled eggs
Serve as the base that the sauce is poured over.

The step that matters

Adding the beaten eggs to the hot mixture. Eggs can curdle or scramble if the mixture is too hot when they go in. Straining the beaten eggs and adding them gradually to a sauce that is hot but not boiling helps keep it smooth.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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