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Bread Sauce

A creamy sauce made with onion, milk, breadcrumbs, butter, peppercorns, and optional cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Bread Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel the onion and insert the clove into it.

  2. Put the onion and milk in a saucepan and bring to a boil.

Thicken

  1. Stir in the breadcrumbs and add the peppercorns.

  2. Cook for 15 minutes.

  3. Remove the onion and peppercorns.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in the cream and butter, and season with salt.

  2. Keep hot until ready to serve.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

  5. Onion + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,827 recipes

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

Onion and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,827 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

Milk
Forms the liquid base that the breadcrumbs swell in and thicken.
Breadcrumbs
Absorb the hot milk and swell, thickening the sauce to a smooth consistency.
Butter
Adds fat for a rich mouthfeel and a silkier finish.
Cream
Adds richness and smoothness to the finished sauce.
Onion
Releases aromatic flavour into the milk as it heats.
Peppercorns
Infuse the milk with a gentle peppery aroma.

The step that matters

Cooking the breadcrumbs in the milk. Once breadcrumbs go in, the milk can scorch on the base of the pan and the sauce can turn lumpy or gluey if it is not stirred. Keep the heat moderate and stir so the crumbs swell evenly and the starch thickens the milk smoothly.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, milk, 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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