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Sauce

Bread Sauce

A sauce made by soaking bread crumbs in milk, boiling with onion, and seasoning with peppercorns and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Bread Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Soak the bread crumbs in milk for 30 minutes.

  2. Boil with the onion for 15 minutes.

  3. Add peppercorns and salt.

  4. Remove the onion and peppercorns 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. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Bread + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,676 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Milk + oniontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Absorb the milk and swell, thickening the sauce to a smooth body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that gives the sauce its creamy texture.
Onion
Releases its flavour into the milk as it boils, adding savoury aroma.

The step that matters

Boil the milk with the onion gently. Milk scorches and boils over easily, and scorched milk tastes burnt and sticks to the pan. Keep the heat moderate and stir so the onion flavour infuses evenly without catching on the base.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Tomatofits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk. 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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