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Bread Sauce

A sauce made by boiling stale bread in cream, mace, salt, and wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,009 recipes. The science ↓

Bread Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the grated stale bread in the cream with mace and salt.

  2. When the mixture is about half done, add the wine.

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. Cream + macetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,009 recipes
  2. Cream + winetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,887 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Bread + winetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together956 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  4. Mace + winetop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  5. Bread + macetop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,005 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Stale bread
Its starch absorbs the cream and swells, thickening the sauce to a soft, spoonable body.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, giving the sauce a smooth, velvety mouthfeel.
Wine
Adds acidity and aroma that balance the richness of the cream and bread.

The step that matters

Boiling the bread in the cream. As the bread absorbs the cream and thickens, the mixture can catch on the base of the pan and scorch, and the starch sets the sauce as it cools, so the texture depends on how well it is cooked through.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, cream, wine. 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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