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Bread Sauce

A sweet, nutmeg‑flavored sauce made with breadcrumbs, suet, sugar, citrus peel, raisins, egg, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Bread Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bread

  1. Break the bread into small pieces.

  2. Cover the pieces with cold water and soak for 1 hour.

  3. Strain the bread and squeeze dry.

  4. Beat out all the lumps with a fork.

Make the mixture

  1. Add the raisins, suet, sugar, peel, and nutmeg, and mix well.

  2. Beat the egg.

  3. Add the milk and stir into the rest of the ingredients.

  4. Put the mixture into a greased basin.

Steam and serve

  1. Steam or boil for 2 hours.

  2. Serve with a sweet sauce, 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. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Nutmeg + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Egg + nutmegtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and nutmeg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 24,744 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Bread
Soaked and crumbed, it forms the body that thickens the sauce.
Suet
Adds fat and richness, giving a moist, tender texture.
Egg
Beaten in to help bind the mixture and give it structure as it cooks.
Milk
Provides the liquid that softens the crumbs into a smooth, moist sauce.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the richness of the suet and peel.

The step that matters

Beat out all the lumps with a fork. Bread soaked in water clumps together, and once milk and other ingredients are stirred in, lumps are hard to break up. Breaking them down first gives an even, smooth texture.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Gingerfits less well
  4. Allspicefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, milk, bread. 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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