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Bread Sauce

A creamy sauce made by simmering milk with onion, cloves, peppercorns, then adding breadcrumbs, salt, and butter.

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. Scald the milk with the onion, cloves, and peppercorns.

  2. Strain the mixture.

  3. Add the bread crumbs and cook in a double boiler for twenty minutes.

  4. Stir in the salt and butter.

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. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Onion + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 soften and thicken into a smooth sauce.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the infused milk and swell, thickening the sauce to a spoonable texture.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, glossy mouthfeel to the finished sauce.
Onion
Infuses the milk with savory aroma during scalding.
Cloves
Infuse the milk with warm, spiced aroma.

The step that matters

Cooking the bread crumbs in the double boiler. Cooking gently over indirect heat lets the crumbs absorb liquid and thicken evenly. Direct high heat can scorch the milk or make the sauce lumpy and stuck to the pan.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Clovethe original

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