Skip to main content
Sauce

Bread Sauce

A sauce made from soaked bread crumbs, milk or cream, butter, onion, mace, and salt, thickened over heat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Bread Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Soak and heat

  1. Soak the bread crumbs in milk or cream for one hour.

  2. Place the mixture over heat and add the halved onion.

Thicken and serve

  1. Stir the sauce continuously until it thickens.

  2. Remove the onion before serving hot with game or poultry.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  3. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

White bread crumbs
Absorb the milk and swell with heat, thickening the sauce and giving it body.
Milk or cream
Forms the liquid base, and cream adds richness and a smoother mouthfeel.
Butter
Adds fat for a rich, silky texture and a mellow flavour.
Onion
Infuses the liquid with savoury aroma as it heats, then is removed.
Mace
Adds a warm, aromatic spice note that suits game and poultry.

The step that matters

Stir the sauce continuously until it thickens. The starch in the bread crumbs swells as the sauce heats and thickens it. Constant stirring keeps the heat even and prevents the crumbs from scorching on the base of the pan or forming lumps.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, milk, egg, butter, onion):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk, egg, butter, onion. 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.

More bread sauce recipes

Eggs in 3 See all 282 →

You might also like

Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipesDutch SauceDutch Sauce74 recipes