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Bread Sauce

Bread sauce is a savory sauce made from stale bread crumbs, milk, onion, cloves, salt, cayenne, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

Prepare

  1. Tie the onion and cloves loosely in cheesecloth.

Cook

  1. Cook the bread crumbs, milk, and onion in a double boiler for 30 minutes.

  2. Remove the onion.

  3. Add the seasonings and butter.

Serve

  1. Serve with roast or steamed chicken and roast partridge.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Stale bread crumbs
Thicken the milk into a smooth, soft sauce as they absorb liquid and swell.
Milk
Provides the liquid that the bread crumbs absorb, giving the sauce its creamy body.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the finished sauce.
Cloves
Infuse warm, aromatic flavor into the milk while it cooks, then are removed with the onion.

The step that matters

Cook the bread crumbs, milk, and onion in a double boiler. Gentle, indirect heat from a double boiler keeps the milk from scorching or curdling while the bread slowly absorbs it and thickens the sauce evenly over the full 30 minutes.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk, onion, butter. 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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