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Bread Sauce

A creamy sauce made by boiling bread, onion, and peppercorns, then adding cream, butter, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

Make the base

  1. Boil the water with the bread crumb, minced onion, and whole white pepper until the onion is tender.

  2. Drain the water and remove the peppercorns.

  3. Rub the bread through a sieve into a saucepan.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the cream, butter, and salt.

  2. Stir until it boils.

  3. Serve in a sauce 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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Bread + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,676 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Onion + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,827 recipes

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

Onion and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,827 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumb
Starch from the bread thickens the liquid into a smooth, body-rich sauce.
Onion
Softened in simmering water, it adds a mild, sweet aromatic flavour.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, giving the sauce a smooth, silky mouthfeel.
Butter
Adds fat that enriches flavour and gives the sauce a glossy finish.

The step that matters

Stir until it boils. Cream and butter can scorch or separate on the base of the pan if left unattended. Constant stirring spreads the heat evenly and keeps the sauce smooth as it comes to a boil.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, onion, cream, 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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