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Bread Sauce

A creamy sauce made by simmering milk with spices, then adding bread crumbs, cream, butter, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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. Heat the milk with the cloves, onion, and peppercorns in a saucepan, without boiling, for 30 minutes.

  2. Remove the onion and spices, then stir in the bread crumbs.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil for a few minutes.

  4. Add the cream, butter, and salt to taste, then serve.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Clove + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Forms the liquid base that the bread crumbs thicken and that carries the infused flavour.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the hot milk and swell, thickening the sauce to a smooth, spoonable texture.
Cream
Adds richness and a softer, silkier mouthfeel to the finished sauce.
Butter
Adds fat for a rounded flavour and a glossy finish.

The step that matters

Heating the milk without boiling. Holding the milk just below a boil lets the cloves, onion and peppercorns infuse gently. Boiling at this stage can scorch the milk on the pan base and give it a harsh, bitter taste, so keep the heat low and watch it closely.

Swap the clove

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

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

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