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Bread

Bread Sauce

A sauce made by soaking bread crumbs in meat broth, flavored with onion, salt, mace, peppercorns, cream, and optional cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and meat are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,924 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Bread Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine grated bread crumbs with enough meat broth to moisten them.

  2. Let the mixture soak.

  3. Add parboiled onion, salt, mace, and peppercorns.

  4. Stir occasionally.

  5. When the mixture is smooth and thick, remove the onion and peppercorns.

  6. Stir in the cream.

  7. Add a pinch of cayenne if desired.

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 + meattop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Tea + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together383 recipes

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

  4. Onion + macetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

  5. Meat + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,364 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

Bread crumbs
Absorb the broth and swell into a thick, smooth body for the sauce.
Meat or poultry broth
Moistens the crumbs and carries the savory flavour through the sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and a silkier mouthfeel to the finished sauce.
Onion
Infuses the liquid with mild aroma, then is removed before serving.

The step that matters

Removing the onion and peppercorns. Leaving them in lets the sauce keep flavouring and thickening unevenly, and bits can spoil the smooth texture. Remove them once the sauce is smooth and thick.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tea, bread, meat, onion, cream):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tea, bread, meat, onion, 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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