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Bread Sauce

A sauce made by simmering bread crumbs with peppercorns, salt, mace, and milk.

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

Bread Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Place bread crumbs in a small saucepan.

  2. Add peppercorns, salt, mace, and enough milk to cover the mixture.

  3. Simmer until smooth, stirring frequently to prevent burning.

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 + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Mace + milktop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,346 recipes

    Shared aroma: sabinene (woody, terpenic).

  3. Bread + macetop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,005 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Thicken the milk into a smooth, soft sauce as they soak and cook.
Milk
Provides the liquid that the bread crumbs absorb and swell in to form the sauce.
Whole peppercorns
Infuse the milk with a sharp, peppery aroma during simmering.
Mace
Adds a warm, aromatic spice flavour to the infused milk.

The step that matters

Simmer until smooth, stirring frequently. Milk solids and starch settle and scorch on the base of the pan if left unstirred, giving a burnt taste and gritty texture. Frequent stirring spreads heat evenly and keeps the sauce smooth as the crumbs break down.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk. 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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