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 the infusion
Blanch the onion in scalding water for 5 minutes.
Quarter the blanched onion.
In a saucepan, combine the onion, peppercorns, cloves, mace, nutmeg, salt, and milk.
Heat the milk mixture over low heat, watching closely to prevent boiling.
Make the sauce
Once the milk is hot, strain it into a clean saucepan.
Stir in enough bread crumbs to achieve a puree-like consistency.
Just before serving, stir in the cream or the beaten egg yolk mixture.
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.
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Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together8,686 recipes
Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
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Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together6,557 recipes
Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
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Clove + macetop 6% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together8,400 recipes
Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).
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Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together11,466 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
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Onion + clovetop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together16,901 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).
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 carries the flavours and thickens with the bread crumbs.
- Stale white bread crumbs
- Absorb the warm milk and swell, giving the sauce its thick, puree-like body.
- Cream
- Adds richness and a smoother, silkier mouthfeel to the finished sauce.
- Egg yolk
- Enriches and thickens the sauce, adding body and a smooth texture when stirred in.
The step that matters
Heat the milk over low heat. Milk scorches and can boil over easily, and boiling can make it taste cooked or cause a skin to form. Gentle heat lets the onion, spices and salt infuse the milk without burning it.
Swap the onion
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clove, mace, nutmeg, milk, bread, cream):
- Leekfits better
- Carrotfits better
- Potatofits better
- Onionthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against clove, mace, nutmeg, milk, bread, 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.
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