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Bread Sauce

A creamy sauce made from stale bread crumbs, onion, spices, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Bread Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the soak

  1. Grate stale bread crumbs into a basin.

  2. Add the onion, salt, pepper, and cayenne.

  3. Cover the bread with milk and let it soak for 3 hours.

  4. If needed, add more milk just before cooking.

Cook and serve

  1. In a clean saucepan, heat the mixture while stirring to prevent burning.

  2. Once hot, it should have a creamy consistency.

  3. Remove the onion and serve.

  4. Optionally, stir in 1 tablespoon of cream before serving.

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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Onion + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

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

  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

Stale bread crumbs
Absorb the milk and swell into a thick, creamy body that thickens the sauce.
Milk
Softens the bread and forms the liquid base of the sauce.
Onion
Infuses the milk with savory, aromatic flavor while it soaks and heats.
Cream
Adds richness and a smoother, silkier mouthfeel at the end.

The step that matters

Heating while stirring. Milk-based sauces scorch easily on the base of the pan, and constant stirring spreads the heat evenly so the sauce stays smooth and does not burn.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, onion, pepper, 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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