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Sauce

Another Bread Sauce

A sauce made by boiling stale bread in milk and water, seasoned with mace, pepper, salt, butter, and white wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Another Bread Sauce

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 ↓

Another Bread Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the stale bread in milk and water.

  2. Add mace, pepper, and salt when the mixture is half done.

  3. Stir in the butter and white wine.

  4. Let it boil once.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Pepper + white winetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,433 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

Stale bread
Soaks up the liquid and swells, thickening the sauce into a soft, smooth body.
Milk
Adds creaminess and a mild, rich body to the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat that gives the sauce a silky, rounded mouthfeel.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma that brighten the richness of the milk and butter.
Mace
Adds a warm, aromatic flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Let it boil once. Starch from the bread swells as the liquid heats and thickens the sauce. One brief boil sets this texture; boiling for long can make the bread gluey and the sauce heavy.

Swap the mace

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

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

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