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Bread Sauce for Turkies, Game, &C

A sauce made by soaking bread in milk or cream, adding onion, butter, white pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Bread Sauce for Turkies, Game, &C

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Soak a piece of bread in ½ pint of milk or cream.

  2. Add the peeled onion and boil until tender.

  3. Place the mixture over heat until the milk is absorbed.

  4. Bruise the bread and mix in 2 ounces of fresh butter, white pepper, and salt.

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

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

  2. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Milk + oniontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  4. Butter + white peppertop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Onion + white peppertop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

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

What each ingredient does

Milk or cream
Softens the bread and forms the smooth, thickened body of the sauce.
Onion
Infuses the liquid with a mild, sweet aroma as it boils until tender.
Fresh butter
Adds fat for a rich flavour and a silky, glossy mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Place the mixture over heat until the milk is absorbed. The bread swells and thickens as it soaks up the milk. Too much heat can scorch the milk solids and make the sauce stick, while stopping too early leaves it thin and watery.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

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