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Sauce

Bread Sauce

A savory sauce made by simmering milk, mace, onion, salt, and peppercorns, then thickened with bread crumbs and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread 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 infusion

  1. Simmer the milk, mace, onion, salt, and peppercorns together for 20 minutes.

Thicken and finish

  1. Strain the mixture over the bread crumbs and butter.

  2. Return to the pan and let it thicken without boiling.

  3. Stir in sherry if desired.

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. Butter + breadtop 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. Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Milk + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,479 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Absorb the infused milk and swell to thicken the sauce into a smooth, spoonable texture.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the thickened sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that is infused with flavour and then thickened.

The step that matters

Return to the pan and let it thicken without boiling. Bread crumbs keep absorbing liquid and swelling as the sauce sits. Boiling can scorch the milk and make the sauce grainy or split, so gentle heat is needed for a smooth texture.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. Macethe original

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