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Bread Sauce

A sauce made from milk, bread crumbs, onion, butter, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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

Start the sauce

  1. Bring the milk and chopped onion to a boil in a saucepan.

Prepare the crumbs

  1. Ensure the bread is very dry.

  2. Dry the bread in the oven if necessary.

  3. Roll the bread into fine crumbs.

  4. Sift the crumbs through a flour sieve.

Finish the sauce

  1. Add the fine crumbs to the boiling milk.

  2. Cook the mixture for 10 minutes.

  3. Remove the onion from the sauce.

  4. Add salt to taste.

  5. Add pepper to taste.

  6. Add butter to the mixture.

Crisp the crumbs and serve

  1. Heat 1 tablespoon of butter in a small frying pan until hot but not burning.

  2. Add coarse crumbs to the pan and stir constantly until they are crisp and brown.

  3. Sprinkle the crispy crumbs over birds or game.

  4. Pour the sauce around 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 + 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

Bread crumbs
Absorb the milk and swell as they cook, thickening the sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the crumbs thicken into a smooth sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the finished sauce.
Onion
Infuses the milk with a mild savoury aroma before it is removed.

The step that matters

Stir the crumbs constantly while browning them. Fine crumbs in hot butter brown quickly and can scorch. Constant stirring spreads the heat evenly so they turn crisp and golden rather than burnt and bitter.

Swap the onion

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

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

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