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Bread Sauce

A creamy sauce made from milk, onion, French roll, peppercorns, and cream, strained and boiled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,399 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Bread Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the French roll in half.

  2. Pull the pieces into small pieces or use bread crumbs.

  3. Peel the onion.

Make the sauce

  1. In a clean saucepan, combine the milk, onion, French roll, peppercorns, and a little salt.

  2. Cover the mixture and let it soak for 15 minutes.

  3. Place the saucepan over heat.

  4. Stir with a wooden spoon until smooth and boiling.

  5. Remove the onion and peppercorns.

  6. Strain the sauce through a sieve.

Finish

  1. Return the sauce to the saucepan.

  2. Stir in the cream.

  3. Heat again until the sauce boils.

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

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

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

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

  3. Onion + milktop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

French roll
Bread absorbs the milk and swells, thickening the sauce to a soft, smooth body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the bread soaks up and thickens when heated.
Cream
Adds richness and a silky texture to the finished sauce.
Onion
Its flavour infuses the milk during soaking, adding savoury aroma.
Peppercorns
Infuse the milk with a mild, peppery aroma before being removed.

The step that matters

Stir until smooth and boiling. Bread starch thickens the milk as it heats, and constant stirring prevents lumps forming and the milk scorching on the base of the pan.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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