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Bread Sauce

A sauce made by simmering onion and peppercorns in milk, then adding bread crumbs, butter, flour, and cream or milk.

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

Make the infusion

  1. Place the sliced onion and peppercorns in the milk over boiling water until the onion is soft.

  2. Pour the milk mixture over the bread crumbs and cover for 1 hour.

Finish the sauce

  1. Beat the mixture smooth.

  2. Add salt and butter rubbed in flour.

  3. Add enough cream or milk to reach the desired consistency and boil for a few minutes.

  4. Serve thin enough to pour.

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. Butter + creamtop 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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 hot milk and swell, thickening the sauce into a smooth body.
Butter rubbed in flour
Adds richness and, cooked briefly, helps thicken the sauce.
Milk
Liquid that softens the crumbs and carries the onion and peppercorn flavour.
Onion
Infused into the milk to add savoury aroma to the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the cream or milk to the desired consistency. Bread crumbs keep thickening as the sauce stands and cools, so adding liquid too early can leave it stiff. Adjust to a thin pouring texture, then boil briefly to cook the crumbs and flour.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Arrowrootfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

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