Skip to main content
Main

Bread Sauce

A creamy sauce made from bread crumbs, milk, shallot, butter, mace, pepper, salt, cayenne, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 the bread crumbs, milk, shallot, butter, mace, pepper, salt, and cayenne in an enamelled saucepan.

  2. Place the saucepan by the fire while the chicken roasts, but do not let it get hot until ready to serve.

  3. Beat the mixture over the fire.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the shallot before serving.

  2. Stir in the cream just before serving.

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. Shallot + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Fine bread crumbs
Thicken the milk into a soft, smooth sauce as they absorb liquid and swell.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the bread crumbs soak up and thicken.
Butter
Adds fat for a rich mouthfeel and a silky finish.
Shallot
Infuses the sauce with a mild onion aroma, then is removed before serving.
Cream
Adds richness and a smoother, looser texture when stirred in at the end.

The step that matters

Keep the sauce from getting hot before serving. Bread sauce thickens as the starch in the crumbs swells and can scorch or become gluey if overheated. Holding it warm by the fire, not boiling, keeps it smooth until the cream is added.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Macethe original

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

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