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Bread

Bread Sauce

A creamy sauce made from stale bread, onion, milk, peppercorns, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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

Prepare

  1. Allow the grated bread to dry in a paper bag before using.

  2. Boil the onion pieces in the milk, then strain to remove the onion.

Make the sauce

  1. Pour the boiling milk over the bread crumbs and add the peppercorns.

  2. Simmer in a saucepan for about 20 minutes, adding more milk as needed to achieve a smooth consistency.

  3. Remove the peppercorns before serving and stir in the fresh butter.

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. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Bread + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,676 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

Stale bread
Absorbs the hot milk and swells into a thick, smooth body for the sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the bread soaks up and simmers into a sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the finished sauce.
Onion
Infuses the milk with mild savoury flavour before being strained out.

The step that matters

Simmering with the bread. Stale bread thickens as it soaks and simmers in milk. Too little liquid leaves the sauce stiff, while too much makes it thin, so adding milk as needed matters for a smooth result.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

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

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