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Bread Sauce

A sauce made by simmering milk with bread crumbs, onion, cloves, salt, cayenne, and butter, finished with browned crumbs and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Bread Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Combine milk, fine bread crumbs, onion, cloves, salt, and cayenne in a double boiler.

  2. Cook for about 1 hour, stirring occasionally.

  3. Remove the onion, beat the mixture well, and add 1 tablespoon of butter.

Brown the crumbs and serve

  1. Heat 1 tablespoon of butter in a small saucepan.

  2. Add coarse bread crumbs and stir over heat until brown and crisp.

  3. Sprinkle the browned crumbs over the sauce and timbales.

  4. Garnish each timbale with a sprig of parsley.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Clove + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

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

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

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 bread softens into a thick, smooth sauce.
Fine bread crumbs
Thicken the milk as they soak and swell, giving the sauce its body.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the finished sauce.
Coarse bread crumbs
Toasted in butter until crisp, they add browning, aroma and a crunchy topping.

The step that matters

Cook for about 1 hour, stirring occasionally. Bread must soften fully and the milk must thicken slowly over gentle heat; stirring prevents scorching on the bottom of the pan and keeps the sauce smooth.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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