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Bread Sauce

A savory sauce made by simmering poultry parts with onion, garlic, peppercorns, and water, then thickened with stale bread crumbs, butter, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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

Make the stock

  1. In a saucepan, combine the necks, gizzards, livers, onion, cloves, peppercorns, and enough soft water to cover.

  2. Boil the mixture well.

  3. Strain the liquid over stale bread crumbs in a bowl.

Finish the sauce

  1. Return the bread crumbs and strained gravy to the saucepan.

  2. Add butter and cream, then season with salt.

  3. Boil the mixture well, adding more cream if it becomes too thick.

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

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

  3. Clove + teatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together181 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Onion + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Onion + buttertop 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

Stale bread crumbs
Soak up the strained liquid and thicken the sauce to a soft, spoonable texture.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the finished sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and body, loosening the thickened crumbs into a smooth sauce.
Onion
Contributes savoury aroma and flavour to the stock.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture well, adding more cream if it becomes too thick. Bread crumbs keep absorbing liquid as they stand and boil, so the sauce can stiffen quickly. Adding cream loosens the starch so it stays smooth and pourable rather than pasty.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, onion, bread, butter, tea, 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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