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Bread Sauce

A creamy sauce made from stale bread crumbs, milk, butter, and spices, simmered and served hot.

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

  1. Pour boiling water over the bread crumbs and milk; cover with a plate and let sit for 20 to 30 minutes.

  2. Transfer to a clean saucepan and add salt, mace, cayenne, and butter.

  3. Stir constantly over medium heat for a few minutes.

  4. Mix in the cream, bring to a boil, and serve immediately.

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. 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. Milk + macetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,346 recipes

    Shared aroma: sabinene (woody, terpenic).

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

What each ingredient does

Stale bread crumbs
Thicken the milk as they soak up liquid and swell, giving the sauce its body.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and body, softening the sauce's flavor and texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the bread crumbs absorb to thicken the sauce.

The step that matters

Stir constantly over medium heat. The softened bread can scorch on the bottom of the pan and the sauce can catch if left unattended. Constant stirring keeps it even and smooth while it thickens.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Celeryfits about as well
  4. Macethe original

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