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Bread Sauce

A savory sauce made from onion, milk, bread crumbs, butter, salt, pepper, and optional water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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

  1. Slice the onion and simmer it in the milk until tender.

  2. Place the bread crumbs in a saucepan and strain the milk over them.

  3. Cover and soak for 30 minutes, then stir until smooth.

  4. Season with salt and pepper, and add the butter.

  5. Bring the sauce to a boil and serve.

  6. Add boiling water if the sauce is 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  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

Bread crumbs
Soak up the milk and thicken the sauce as they swell.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the crumbs absorb and the sauce is built on.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the finished sauce.
Onion
Infuses the milk with savory flavor as it simmers.

The step that matters

Soak the crumbs, then stir until smooth. Crumbs need time to fully absorb the liquid and swell. Stirring after soaking breaks them down into an even, smooth texture instead of lumps.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

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