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Sauce

Bread Sauce

A sauce made from bread crumbs, sweet milk, onion, butter, salt, and pepper, served with roast duck or game.

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

Make the sauce

  1. Combine grated bread crumbs and sweet milk in a saucepan.

  2. Add the onion and bring to a boil, stirring until the sauce is smooth.

  3. Remove the onion and stir in the butter, salt, and pepper, then boil once more.

Serve

  1. Serve with roast duck or any kind of game.

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. Bread + milktop 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

Grated bread crumbs
Thicken the milk into a smooth, body-rich sauce as they absorb liquid and swell.
Sweet milk
Forms the liquid base that the bread crumbs thicken into a creamy sauce.
Onion
Infuses the milk with mild savory flavor during heating, then is removed.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a silky mouthfeel to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Bring to a boil while stirring until smooth. Bread crumbs can clump or scorch on the bottom of the pan if not stirred. Constant stirring keeps the starch evenly dispersed so the sauce thickens smoothly rather than lumpy or burnt.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk, 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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