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Bread Sauce with Onion

A creamy sauce made from bread crumbs, onion, milk, butter, and cream.

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 with Onion

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a clean saucepan, combine the bread-crumbs and onion quarters.

  2. Pour in the milk and boil gently, stirring often, until the onion is tender, about 40 to 60 minutes.

  3. Press the mixture through a fine sieve.

  4. If the sauce is too thin, reduce it by boiling quickly.

Finish and serve

  1. Add salt, nutmeg, butter, and cream, and stir until the sauce reaches the desired thickness.

  2. 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. Nutmeg + creamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Fine bread-crumbs
Thicken the milk as they soak up liquid and swell, giving the sauce its body.
Onion
Infuses the milk with mild savoury flavour as it simmers and softens.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the crumbs thicken and the onion flavours.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the finished sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and a smoother, softer texture to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Boiling gently while stirring often. Milk scorches and sticks to the base of the pan if left unattended, and breadcrumbs can thicken unevenly. Gentle heat and frequent stirring keep the sauce smooth and prevent a burnt taste.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

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