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Sauce

Bread Sauce

A creamy sauce made with bread crumbs, onion, cream, butter, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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

Prepare

  1. Break the white bread into fine crumbs to make a heaping cupful.

  2. Boil the onion until soft.

Make the sauce

  1. Prepare a cream butter sauce by melting the butter and mixing it with the cream, omitting any thickening.

  2. Finely chop the boiled onion and stir it into the sauce.

  3. Gradually add the bread crumbs, stirring until the sauce thickens to a pourable consistency.

  4. Season with pepper.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Bread + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,676 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

White bread crumbs
Thicken the sauce as they absorb the cream and butter, giving it body.
Cream
Provides the liquid base and richness that the bread crumbs thicken.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the cream base, rounding out the flavour.
Onion
Adds savoury aroma and flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Gradually add the bread crumbs. Adding crumbs all at once can create lumps and an uneven texture. Adding them gradually while stirring lets the starch in the bread absorb liquid evenly, so the sauce thickens smoothly to a pourable consistency.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, cream, butter, pepper):

  1. Potatofits about as well
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, cream, butter, 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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