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Sauce

Ratafia Sauce

A sauce made from ratafias, milk, and egg yolk, simmered and thickened.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 88,785 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Ratafia Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Infuse the milk

  1. Bruise the ratafias and place them in a saucepan with the milk.

  2. Bring to a boil, then remove from heat.

Thicken the sauce

  1. Beat the egg yolk and stir it into the milk when it has cooled slightly.

  2. Return to low heat and stir until the sauce thickens, but do not let it boil.

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 + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Ratafias
Gives the sauce its characteristic almond-like aroma and flavour as they steep in the milk.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and carries the ratafia flavour.
Egg yolk
Thickens the sauce as its proteins gently set with heat, and adds richness.

The step that matters

Keep the sauce below boiling once the yolk is added. Egg yolk proteins thicken the sauce gently as they set. If the heat is too high or the sauce boils, the proteins scramble and the sauce curdles and turns grainy.

“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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