Skip to main content
Main

Bread Sauce

A creamy sauce made by boiling onion and pepper in milk, then adding grated bread and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

Infuse the milk

  1. Boil the onion with whole black pepper in milk until the onion is soft.

  2. Strain the milk over the grated bread.

  3. Cover the mixture.

Thicken and season

  1. Transfer to a saucepan with butter and boil together.

  2. Season with salt and serve.

Alternative method

  1. Slice the onion thinly.

  2. Boil in broth or water until tender.

  3. Add enough bread crumbs to thicken, along with butter, pepper, and salt.

  4. Boil until thick and smooth, but not too thick to pour.

  5. Grate a teaspoon of fresh onion into the bread crumbs.

  6. Add the milk.

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

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 and softens the bread into a smooth sauce.
White bread
Thickens the sauce as its starch absorbs liquid and swells during boiling.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the finished sauce.
Onion
Contributes savory aroma and flavor that infuses into the milk.

The step that matters

Boil until thick but still pourable. Bread starch thickens the sauce as it simmers and absorbs liquid, so it keeps thickening as it cools. Stopping at the right point keeps it smooth and pourable rather than stiff.

Swap the onion

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

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

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

More bread sauce recipes

Eggs in 3 See all 282 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesOatmeal BreadOatmeal Bread51 recipes