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Bread Sauce

A creamy sauce made from milk, bread crumbs, onion, cloves, salt, cayenne pepper, butter, and garnished with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Bread Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Combine milk, bread crumbs, onion, cloves, salt, and cayenne in a double boiler.

  2. Cook for about 1 hour, stirring occasionally.

  3. Remove the onion from the mixture.

  4. Beat the mixture well.

  5. Stir in 1 tablespoon of butter.

Add the crumbs and serve

  1. Heat 1 tablespoon of butter in a small saucepan.

  2. Add coarse bread crumbs and stir over heat until brown and crisp.

  3. Sprinkle the browned crumbs over the sauce.

  4. Garnish each serving with a sprig of parsley.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Clove + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  5. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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 swell and thicken into a sauce.
Fine stale bread crumbs
Absorb the milk and thicken the sauce to a smooth, spoonable body.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the finished sauce and browned crumbs.
Onion
Infuses the milk with savory aroma and is removed before serving.

The step that matters

Cook the bread crumbs in butter until brown and crisp. Bread crumbs can burn quickly once the butter is hot, turning bitter. Stirring constantly over steady heat browns them evenly through the Maillard reaction, giving a nutty flavor and crisp texture without scorching.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, bread, clove, pepper, butter, parsley. 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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