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Bread Sauce

A creamy sauce made by simmering onion in milk, soaking bread crumbs, whisking with butter, seasoning, and boiling.

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

Make the infusion

  1. Simmer the sliced onion in the milk until tender.

  2. Strain the milk.

Make the sauce

  1. Pour the strained milk over the bread crumbs in a saucepan. Cover the saucepan and soak for half an hour.

  2. Beat smooth with an egg whisk.

  3. Add the seasoning and butter. Stir well.

  4. Bring to a boil.

  5. If too thick, add boiling water.

  6. Add more butter.

Serve

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

  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 soak up and swell into a thick sauce.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the milk and swell, thickening the sauce to a smooth, spoonable body.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky texture that carries the flavor of the sauce.
Onion
Infuses the milk with savory flavor during simmering, then is removed by straining.

The step that matters

Beating smooth. Soaked crumbs can stay lumpy if not broken up while still warm. Beating them smooth gives an even, velvety texture, since starch in the crumbs thickens as it hydrates and cooks.

Swap the mace

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

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

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