Skip to main content
Main

Bread Sauce

A sauce made by simmering milk with peppercorns, clove, and onion, then adding bread crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 sauce

  1. Combine milk, peppercorns, clove, and onion in a saucepan.

  2. Simmer for 1 hour, then strain the mixture.

  3. Add the bread crumbs to the strained milk and simmer for 10 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve in a hot sauceboat, adding butter if desired.

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. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Clove + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 crumbs thicken and the aromatics infuse into.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and swell as they simmer, thickening the milk into a smooth sauce.
Small onion
Gives savoury aromatic flavour to the milk as it simmers and is strained out.
Peppercorns
Release their pungent aroma into the milk during simmering.

The step that matters

Add the bread crumbs to the strained milk and simmer for 10 minutes. Bread crumbs thicken the milk as their starch absorbs liquid and swells. Simmering gently for the stated time lets them hydrate fully and smooths the sauce; too little time leaves it grainy and thin, while boiling vigorously can make it stick to the pan.

Swap the clove

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, bread, 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.

More bread sauce recipes

Eggs in 3 See all 282 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesOatmeal BreadOatmeal Bread51 recipes