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Bread Sauce

Bread sauce is a creamy sauce made with bread crumbs, milk, butter, and spices.

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

Soak the crumbs

  1. Pour boiling water over the bread crumbs and new milk in a bowl.

  2. Cover with a plate and let sit for 20 to 30 minutes.

Make the sauce

  1. Transfer the mixture to a clean saucepan.

  2. Add salt, mace, cayenne, and butter.

  3. Stir constantly over medium heat for a few minutes until combined.

  4. Mix in the cream.

  5. Bring to a boil.

  6. Serve immediately.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

Mace and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Soak up the milk and swell to thicken the sauce into a soft, smooth body.
New milk
Forms the liquid base that the crumbs absorb and thicken into the sauce.
Fresh butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the finished sauce.
Good cream
Adds richness and smoothness, loosening the sauce to a pouring consistency.

The step that matters

Stir constantly over medium heat. Starch from the soaked crumbs can scorch on the bottom of the pan and stick, and stirring keeps the sauce smooth and evenly heated as it thickens.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

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