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Bread Sauce

A sauce made by soaking bread in water, simmering with onion, seasoning, and finishing with butter and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

  1. Place the slice of bread in 2 cups of water.

  2. Chop the onion and add it to the water.

  3. Boil the mixture.

  4. Season with pepper.

  5. Rub the mixture through a fine sieve into a small saucepan.

  6. Add salt, butter, and cream.

  7. Bring to a boil and serve hot.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Bread + oniontop 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

Bread
Thickens the sauce as it softens and breaks down in the liquid.
Onion
Adds savoury, aromatic flavour to the water as it simmers.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the finished sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and softens the sauce's texture at the end.

The step that matters

Rub the mixture through a fine sieve. Pressing the softened bread and onion through a fine sieve breaks down solids and creates a smooth texture. Skipping or rushing this step leaves lumps and fibres in the sauce.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits about as well
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, pepper, butter, 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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