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Bread Sauce

A creamy sauce made with milk, butter, bread crumbs, onion, peppercorns, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread 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

Infuse the milk

  1. Combine the milk, peppercorns, onion, and cloves in a saucepan.

  2. Simmer over low heat for fifteen minutes, then strain.

Thicken and serve

  1. Return the strained milk to the pan and add butter and bread crumbs.

  2. Stir until the mixture boils and thickens to a dropping consistency.

  3. Add the cream and serve.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  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

Bread crumbs
Absorb milk and swell as they heat, thickening the sauce to a smooth body.
Milk
Carries the flavours of the aromatics and forms the liquid base of the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat for a rich mouthfeel and a smooth, glossy finish.
Cream
Adds richness and softens the sauce's flavour at the end.

The step that matters

Stir until the mixture boils and thickens. Bread crumbs need to be stirred while the milk heats so they hydrate evenly and do not clump or stick to the base of the pan. Stopping at a dropping consistency keeps the sauce pourable.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. Clovethe original

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