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Bread Sauce, for Turkies, Game, &C

A sauce made by soaking bread in milk, cooking with onion, butter, pepper, and salt, then removing the onion before serving.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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, for Turkies, Game, &C

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Soak the bread crumb in the milk or cream.

  2. Add the peeled onion and heat over a fire.

  3. Once the milk is absorbed, mash the bread.

Finish and serve

  1. Mix in the butter, white pepper, and salt.

  2. Before serving, remove the onion.

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. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Onion + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,676 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Milk or cream
Provides the liquid that the bread absorbs and swells in, forming the sauce's body.
Bread crumb
Absorbs the milk and its starch thickens the sauce, giving it a soft, smooth body.
Onion
Infuses the milk with a mild savoury aroma and is removed before serving.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother, silkier mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Mash the bread once the milk is absorbed. The bread crumb's starch thickens as it soaks up the milk. Mashing it while soft breaks the crumb into a smooth, even sauce rather than lumps.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, onion, butter, 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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