Name: Sauce Au Pain, Dite Bread Sauce
Ingredients: 200 grams bread crumbs (about 7 cups); 800 ml milk (about 3⅓ cups); 1 whole onion

Why it works: Bread and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Sauce Au Pain, Dite Bread Sauce

Ingredients

200 grams bread crumbs (about 7 cups)
800 ml milk (about 3⅓ cups)
1 whole onion

Directions

Place the bread crumbs in a saucepan with the milk.
Add the whole onion and bring to a boil for 2 minutes.
Remove the onion and serve.

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.

Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,466 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
Bread + oniontop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,676 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Milk + oniontop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together13,418 recipes

Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs: Absorb the milk and swell, thickening the liquid into a smooth, sauce-like body.
Milk: Forms the liquid base that the crumbs hydrate and thicken into a creamy sauce.
Onion: Infuses its aroma into the milk as it heats, then is removed before serving.