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Sauce

Bread Sauce

A creamy sauce made from bread crumbs, milk, butter, lemon or lime juice, nutmeg, pepper, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Bread Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a small saucepan, combine the bread crumbs and milk.

  2. If using condensed milk, add only a small amount.

  3. Add the butter, lemon or lime juice, nutmeg, pepper, and salt.

  4. Simmer the mixture until it thickens.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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, giving the sauce its thick body.
Milk
Hydrates the crumbs and forms the liquid base that thickens into a smooth sauce.
Butter
Adds fat for a rich mouthfeel and a smooth, glossy finish.

The step that matters

Simmer until it thickens. Bread crumbs keep absorbing liquid and starch swells as the sauce heats, so it thickens quickly. Stopping too early leaves it thin, and over-simmering makes it stiff and pasty.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Marjoramfits about as well
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk, butter, lemon, 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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