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Sauce

Bread Sauce

A savory sauce made by soaking bread crumbs in milk, simmering with onion and spices, finished with cream or butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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. Put the bread crumbs in a stew pan.

  2. Pour enough milk over the bread crumbs to soak them, plus a little extra.

  3. Add the onion and pepper or allspice to the pan.

  4. Bring to a boil, then stir well.

  5. Let it simmer until it thickens.

  6. Remove the onion and pepper, then stir in the cream or melted butter.

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. Tea + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together738 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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

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

  4. Tea + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together260 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Bread + oniontop 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
Thicken the milk into a soft, smooth sauce as they soak up liquid and swell.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the bread crumbs soak up and thicken when simmered.
Onion
Infuses the sauce with a mild savory flavor while it simmers.
Cream or melted butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the sauce a smoother, silkier mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Let it simmer until it thickens. Bread crumbs need gentle heat and time to absorb the milk and swell. Boiling hard or stopping too early leaves the sauce thin or lumpy, so stir often and keep it at a low simmer.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Celeryfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. Macethe original

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

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