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Bread Sauce

A creamy sauce made with shallots, milk, bread crumbs, butter, cream, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

Infuse the milk

  1. Combine sliced shallots and hot milk in a saucepan.

  2. Simmer gently for 5 minutes.

  3. Strain the milk over the bread crumbs.

Finish the sauce

  1. Add butter, pepper, salt, and cream to the mixture.

  2. Heat the mixture in a bain-marie until hot.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Shallot + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 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

Shallots
Release a mild onion flavour into the milk as they simmer.
Milk
Forms the liquid base and carries the shallot flavour.
Bread crumbs
Soak up the flavoured milk and thicken the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, glossy mouthfeel.
Cream
Adds richness and body to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Heat the mixture in a bain-marie until hot. Gentle, indirect heat warms the sauce evenly. Rapid boiling can make cream-enriched sauces curdle or turn grainy, so the bain-marie keeps the texture smooth.

Swap the shallot

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Shallotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, bread, butter, pepper, cream. 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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