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Bread Sauce

Bread sauce is a creamy sauce made with bread crumbs, cream or milk, onion, butter, salt, pepper, and optional cooked fowl meat.

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

  1. Rub the bread crumbs through a colander into a stewpan.

  2. Add cream or milk, salt, ground white pepper, chopped onion, and butter.

  3. Boil the mixture for five minutes.

  4. If available, pound the white meat from a cooked fowl fine, rub it through a sieve with a little milk, and add it to the sauce.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Bread + meattop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

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

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Thicken the sauce and give it a soft, body-filled texture as they absorb the liquid.
Cream or milk
Forms the liquid base and adds richness and a smooth texture.
Butter
Adds fat for a rounded flavour and a glossy, smooth mouthfeel.
Onion
Contributes savoury aroma and flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture for five minutes. Boiling lets the bread crumbs swell and fully absorb the liquid, thickening the sauce. Stirring helps prevent scorching on the base of the pan and keeps the texture smooth.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, cream, onion, butter, meat. 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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