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Roman Pie

A savory pie made with cooked meat, bacon, macaroni, and a milk sauce, baked in a vermicelli-lined mold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Roman Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the filling

  1. Remove all fat from the cooked meat and cut it into small pieces.

  2. Chop the bacon coarsely and cut the macaroni into thick rings.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine the milk, onion, lemon peel, and mace.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. Reduce the heat and simmer gently for 30 minutes.

  4. In another pan, melt the butter.

  5. Stir in the flour for a few minutes without browning.

  6. Add the milk mixture to the butter and flour.

  7. Stir quickly until smooth and thick.

  8. Season with salt and pepper.

  9. Strain the sauce into a basin.

  10. Add the meat, bacon, and macaroni to the sauce. Mix well.

Assemble and bake

  1. Butter a suitable tin mold.

  2. Coat it thickly with finely broken vermicelli.

  3. Line the mold with light paste.

  4. Fill the mold with the meat mixture.

  5. Cover with a layer of paste.

  6. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) until the paste is thoroughly cooked.

Serve

  1. Turn the pie out onto a hot dish.

  2. Serve with tomato sauce.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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 butter and milk mixture into a smooth, thick sauce that binds the filling.
Butter
Forms the roux with the flour and adds richness to the sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce that coats the meat and macaroni.
Macaroni
Adds bulk and body to the filling, soaking up some of the sauce.
Bacon
Adds fat and savory flavor to the filling.

The step that matters

Stir the flour without browning. Cooking the flour and butter briefly keeps the roux pale and lets the starch thicken the sauce smoothly; browning changes the flavor and weakens thickening, while stirring quickly until smooth prevents lumps.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, milk, onion, lemon, butter, flour, pepper):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, milk, onion, lemon, butter, flour, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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