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Bread Sauce

A thickened sauce made from bread crumbs soaked in milk, flavored with onion, pepper or allspice, and finished with cream or butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and milk 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

  1. In a stew pan, place the bread crumbs and pour enough milk over them to soak.

  2. If using giblets, stew them and moisten the bread with this liquid instead.

  3. Add the onion and pepper or allspice to the pan and bring to a boil.

  4. Stir well and let it simmer until the mixture is thick.

  5. Remove the onion and pepper, then 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. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

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

  4. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Thicken the milk into a soft, smooth body as they soak and simmer.
Milk
Softens the crumbs and forms the liquid base that becomes the sauce.
Onion
Adds savory flavour to the milk as it simmers, then is removed.
Cream or melted butter
Adds richness and a silky texture when stirred in at the end.

The step that matters

Stir in the cream or butter after removing the onion and pepper. Adding fat off the heat keeps it from separating and leaves a smooth, glossy sauce, while leaving the spices in would make the flavour harsh and overpowering.

Swap the onion

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

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

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