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Bread Sauce for Chicken

A creamy sauce made with hot milk, onion, butter, and bread crumbs, simmered and strained before serving.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread 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 for Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Press cloves into the onion.

  2. Add the hot milk and simmer for 30 minutes.

  3. Stir in the butter and bread crumbs until thickened.

  4. Remove the onion and cloves before serving.

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. Butter + breadtop 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 + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Onion + breadtop 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 crumbs
Absorb the hot milk and swell, thickening the sauce to a soft, spoonable texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the bread crumbs thicken and that carries the onion flavour.
Butter
Adds fat for a smooth, rich mouthfeel and a mellow flavour.
Onion
Infuses the milk with savoury, aromatic flavour as it simmers.

The step that matters

Stir in the bread crumbs until thickened. Bread crumbs swell as they absorb liquid, so adding them to hot milk thickens it quickly. Stirring keeps them evenly dispersed and prevents lumps or a scorched base on the bottom of the pan.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

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