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Bread Sauce

A sauce made from milk, onion, breadcrumbs, butter, mace, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Bread Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Combine the milk, onion, and mace in a pan.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil and simmer for 30 minutes.

  3. Remove the onion.

  4. Add the breadcrumbs, butter, salt, and pepper and stir well.

Serve

  1. Serve in a tureen.

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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

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

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

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

  5. Onion + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Forms the liquid base that the breadcrumbs swell into, giving the sauce its body.
Breadcrumbs
Thicken the milk as their starch absorbs liquid, giving the sauce its body.
Butter
Adds fat for a smooth, rich mouthfeel and flavour.
Onion
Infuses the milk with savoury flavour during simmering.

The step that matters

Simmering the milk with the onion and mace. Gentle simmering lets the flavours seep into the milk without scorching it. Milk can scorch or boil over on the bottom of the pan if left unattended, so keep the heat low.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, onion, clove, 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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