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Bread Sauce

Bread sauce is a savory sauce made by simmering milk with onion, cloves, peppercorns, and bread crumbs, finished with butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Bread Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Infuse the milk

  1. Stick the cloves into the peeled onion.

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

  3. Set near the fire for 15 to 20 minutes to extract the flavor.

  4. Strain the milk; if wasted, make up to ½ pint and return to the pan with the crumbs.

Thicken and finish

  1. Simmer slowly for 30 minutes, stirring carefully to avoid burning.

  2. Stir in the butter just before serving, bring to a boil, and season with salt and cayenne 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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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 crumbs swell into and the sauce's body.
Fine bread crumbs
Absorb the milk and swell as they simmer, thickening the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the finished sauce.
Onion
Gives a mild savory aroma to the milk as it infuses.

The step that matters

Simmer slowly and stir carefully. Milk containing starch from crumbs scorches easily on the base of the pan. Gentle heat and frequent stirring prevent burnt flavor and keep the sauce smooth as it thickens.

Swap the onion

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

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

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