Skip to main content
Main

Bread Sauce

A creamy sauce made by infusing milk with onion and garlic, then thickening with bread crumbs and butter.

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

Infuse the milk

  1. Skin and scald the onion, then insert the cloves into it.

  2. Place the onion in a saucepan with the milk and salt.

  3. Let it stand for 30 minutes to infuse the milk with flavor.

  4. Remove the onion and cloves from the milk.

Make the sauce

  1. Gradually add the bread crumbs while stirring continuously.

  2. Add the butter and let the sauce simmer for 5 minutes, stirring until smooth and thick.

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. Onion + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

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

  5. Butter + oniontop 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 swell into and thicken.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the milk and swell, thickening the sauce to a smooth, coating body.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, glossy mouthfeel to the finished sauce.
Onion
Infuses the milk with a savory, aromatic flavour as it stands.

The step that matters

Adding the bread crumbs gradually. Adding crumbs all at once can form lumps as the starch on the surface hydrates before the rest can absorb liquid. Stirring while adding them keeps the sauce smooth and evenly thickened.

Swap the clove

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

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

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