Skip to main content
Sauce

Bread Sauce

A thick English sauce made from stale bread soaked in milk infused with onion, cloves and peppercorns.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Bread Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the stale bread into thin slices and remove the crusts.

  2. Place the bread in a basin.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine the milk, onion stuck with cloves, and peppercorns; bring to a boil.

  2. Pour the hot milk mixture over the bread in the basin.

  3. Cover with a plate and let it sit by the fire to keep hot for about 1 hour.

  4. Remove the onion and peppercorns, then beat the bread until smooth.

  5. Add pepper, salt, and a little grated nutmeg to taste.

  6. If desired, stir in 1 oz of butter for added richness.

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. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

  4. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Stale bread
Its starch thickens the milk into a soft, smooth sauce as it soaks and is beaten.
Milk
Liquid that softens the bread and forms the body of the sauce.
Onion
Infused with cloves to add a mild, savoury aroma to the milk.
Butter
Adds fat for a richer mouthfeel and smoother finish.

The step that matters

Beating the bread until smooth. Stale bread must be fully broken down after soaking; leftover lumps stay firm and spoil the texture, so the bread should be soft and well mashed before seasoning.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk, clove, pepper, nutmeg, 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

Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipesDutch SauceDutch Sauce74 recipes