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Sauce

Bread-Sauce

A sauce made by soaking bread crumbs in cooking liquid, simmering with onion, peppercorns, salt, mace, then finished with cream or butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and mutton are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,488 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Bread-Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a small saucepan, combine the grated bread crumbs and the cooking liquid.

  2. Let it soak, then simmer with the sliced onion, white peppercorns, salt, and mace.

  3. Remove the onion and peppercorns, then stir in the cream or melted butter.

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 + muttontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,488 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Onion + macetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

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

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

  5. Mace + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,009 recipes

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

Bread crumbs
Thicken the liquid and give the sauce its body as they soak and swell.
Cooking liquid
Provides the savoury base and moisture that the crumbs absorb.
Cream or melted butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture at the end.

The step that matters

Simmering with the bread crumbs after soaking. Once the crumbs have soaked, gentle simmering lets them swell fully and thicken evenly. Boiling hard or leaving it unattended can scorch the bottom of the pan or make the sauce gluey, so keep the heat low and stir.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Pepperfits better
  4. Macethe original

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