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Sauce

Bread Sauce

A sauce made by soaking stale bread in milk, seasoned with black pepper, salt, and butter, served with roast fowl or pig.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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

Prepare

  1. Soak the grated stale bread in enough milk to cover it for about 45 minutes.

Make the sauce

  1. Add the black pepper, salt, and butter.

  2. Add a little more milk and bring to a boil.

Serve

  1. Serve with roast wild fowl or roast pig.

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. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Stale bread
Soaks up milk and swells, thickening the sauce into a soft, spoonable texture.
Milk
Provides the liquid that softens the bread and forms the body of the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat for a richer mouthfeel and a smoother, glossier finish.
Black pepper
Contributes a sharp, aromatic bite that balances the mild, creamy base.

The step that matters

Bringing the sauce to a boil. Milk scorches and can catch on the bottom of the pan if left unstirred at high heat. Starch from the bread thickens as the sauce heats, so keep it moving and watch it closely.

“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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