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Bread Sauce

A creamy sauce made from stale bread crumbs, milk, onion, peppercorns, butter, and optional cream and nutmeg.

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

Prepare

  1. Rub stale bread through a wire sieve or grate it to obtain 2 ounces of crumbs.

  2. Put crumbs in a saucepan with ½ pint of milk, the onion, and peppercorns.

Cook and finish

  1. Boil for 10 minutes, stirring to prevent burning.

  2. Remove from heat, take out the onion and peppercorns.

  3. Stir in a small pat of butter and 2-3 tablespoons of cream until the butter is dissolved.

  4. If desired, add a little grated nutmeg, but many prefer to omit it.

Serve

  1. Serve hot in a sauce tureen.

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. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Stale bread crumbs
Thicken the milk into a smooth, spoonable sauce as the starch absorbs liquid.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the bread swells into and softens during simmering.
Onion
Infuses the milk with mild savoury flavour while it simmers.
Butter
Adds fat and a rich, glossy mouthfeel to the finished sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and a silkier texture to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring while boiling. Bread crumbs and milk settle and scorch easily on the base of the pan during the 10-minute boil. Constant stirring keeps the starch dispersed, prevents burning, and gives a smooth sauce.

Swap the nutmeg

The recipe marks nutmeg as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, milk, onion, butter, cream):

  1. Garlicfits about as well
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Cinnamonfits less well
  4. Celeryfits less well

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