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
In a clean stewpan, combine the stale bread-crumbs, milk, and eschalot.
Boil for 10 minutes until the sauce is ready.
Ensure the bread-crumbs are good and prevent the sauce from boiling over.
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.
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Bread + milktop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together11,466 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
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, thickening the sauce into a smooth, spoonable body.
- Milk
- Forms the liquid base and gives the sauce its creamy moisture as it cooks.
- Eschalot
- Adds a mild, savoury onion aroma that flavours the milk during simmering.
The step that matters
Watch the boil. Milk foams up and can boil over quickly, so the pan needs attention. Bread crumbs soak up liquid and thicken the sauce as it cooks, so the texture develops during the boil.
“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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