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Sauce

Bread Sauce

A sauce made by boiling bread crumbs with milk or cream, onion, peppercorns, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 saucepan, combine the bread crumbs, milk or cream, onion, and peppercorns.

  2. Boil the mixture for about 10 minutes.

  3. Remove the onion, add a pinch of salt, and stir well.

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

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

  3. Milk + oniontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

What each ingredient does

Dry bread crumbs
Thicken the milk into a smooth, soft sauce as they absorb liquid and swell.
Milk or cream
Provides the liquid that the bread crumbs absorb, and adds richness and body.
Onion
Infuses the sauce with mild savory flavor while it simmers, then is removed.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture for about 10 minutes. Simmering long enough lets the bread crumbs soften and swell fully, giving a smooth thickened sauce rather than a grainy or thin one.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk. 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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