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To Make Bread Sauce

Bread sauce made by soaking bread crumbs in milk, adding onion, mace, and seasoning, then simmering and finishing with cream or butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,400 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

To Make Bread Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Place the bread crumbs in a saucepan.

  2. Pour enough milk over the crumbs to soak them, then add a little more milk.

  3. Add the onion with cloves and the blade of mace to the saucepan.

  4. Bring to a boil, stir well, then reduce heat.

  5. Simmer until thick.

  6. Remove the onion and spices.

  7. Stir in the cream or melted 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. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Onion + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Onion + macetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

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

What each ingredient does

White bread crumbs
Thicken the milk as they soak up liquid and swell, giving the sauce its body.
Milk
Hydrates the crumbs and forms the liquid base that becomes the sauce.
Onion with cloves
Infuses the milk with savory aroma as it simmers.
Mace
Adds a warm, aromatic flavor to the infused milk.
Cream or melted butter
Adds fat for richer flavor and a smoother, silkier texture.

The step that matters

Simmer until thick. Bread crumbs keep absorbing liquid and thickening as the sauce cools, so simmering gently until it coats a spoon sets the body. Overcooking can cause it to become stiff and gluey, while undercooking leaves it thin.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

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