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Bread Sauce

A savory sauce made with bread crumbs, milk, butter, onion, garlic, and seasoning.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

Prepare

  1. Peel the onion and insert the garlic cloves into it.

  2. Place the onion (with garlic) in a saucepan with the milk and simmer slowly for 10 minutes.

Thicken and serve

  1. Add the bread crumbs, salt, pepper or cayenne, and butter, and simmer for another 15 minutes.

  2. Remove the onion and serve.

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. Bread + milktop 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

Bread crumbs
Absorb the milk and swell as they simmer, thickening the sauce to a smooth body.
Skim milk
Forms the liquid base that the bread crumbs thicken and carries the onion's flavour.
Butter
Adds fat for a rounder, richer mouthfeel and a softer flavour.
Onion
Infuses the milk with a mild, sweet aroma during the first simmer.

The step that matters

Simmering the bread crumbs in the milk. Once the crumbs go in, the mixture can scorch or stick to the pan base. A slow, gentle simmer with occasional stirring lets the crumbs hydrate evenly and thicken without burning or forming lumps.

Swap the onion

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

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

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