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Bread

Bread Sauce

A sauce made by boiling onion in milk, then adding grated stale bread, butter, flour, and egg.

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

Infuse the milk

  1. Boil the onion in milk with pepper until soft, then remove the onion.

  2. Pour the milk over the grated stale bread and bring to a boil.

Thicken the sauce

  1. Add butter and dredge with flour, stirring well.

  2. Alternatively, slice the onion and cook in veal gravy, then add grated bread, pepper, and a beaten egg.

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. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Onion
Softens and flavours the milk with a mild, sweet aroma.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the bread soaks up to make the sauce.
Stale bread
Absorbs liquid and swells, giving the sauce its body.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells when heated with liquid.
Egg
In the alternative method, sets with heat to bind and thicken the sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour into the butter and milk. Flour must be stirred in thoroughly so its starch disperses evenly. Unmixed flour clumps and forms lumps, and the starch only thickens the sauce evenly once it is fully distributed in the liquid and heated.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

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