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Bread Sauce

A sauce made from grated bread crumbs, sweet ale, onion, butter, salt, and pepper, boiled and served with roast duck or game.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Combine grated bread crumbs, sweet ale, and onion in a pot.

  2. Boil until the sauce is smooth.

  3. Remove the onion, stir in butter, salt, and pepper, then boil once more.

Serve

  1. Serve with roast duck or any kind of game.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

  5. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Grated bread crumbs
Swell and thicken the liquid, giving the sauce its body and smooth texture.
Sweet ale
Supplies the liquid that the crumbs soak up and cook into a sauce, adding flavour.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a silky mouthfeel to the finished sauce.
Onion
Infuses aroma and savoury flavour into the liquid before it is removed.

The step that matters

Boiling the crumbs and ale until smooth. Bread crumbs can scorch on the bottom of the pot and thicken unevenly if left unattended. Stirring keeps heat even, so the starch hydrates fully and the sauce turns smooth rather than lumpy or burnt.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, pepper. 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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