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Sauce

Bread Sauce

A sauce made by boiling milk with onion, mace, and black pepper, then adding bread crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and corn are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,955 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Bread Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the milk with the onion, mace, and black pepper for 15 minutes.

  2. Strain the milk into a saucepan.

  3. Add the bread crumbs and boil for 10 minutes, stirring to prevent burning.

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. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Corn + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

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

  5. Onion + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,205 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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 carries the flavours of the onion and spices.
Fine bread crumbs
Starch absorbs the hot milk and swells, thickening the sauce to a smooth, spoonable texture.
Onion
Adds savoury aroma and background flavour as it steeps in the hot milk.

The step that matters

Stirring while the crumbs boil. Bread crumbs and milk solids settle on the base of the pan and scorch easily. Constant stirring keeps them moving, prevents a burnt taste, and lets the starch thicken the sauce evenly.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

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