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Bread Sauce

A creamy sauce made with milk, onion, breadcrumbs, butter, and cream, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Bread Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a small saucepan, combine the milk and onion with the clove stuck in it, and bring to a boil.

  2. Add the breadcrumbs and simmer gently for 20 minutes.

  3. Remove the onion, then add salt and pepper to taste.

  4. Stir in the butter and cream, and serve.

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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

  3. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Breadcrumbs
Thicken the milk into a soft, smooth sauce as they absorb liquid and swell.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the breadcrumbs swell into and carry flavour from the onion and clove.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the finished sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and smoothness, softening the sauce's flavour and texture.

The step that matters

Simmer gently after adding the breadcrumbs. Breadcrumbs can scorch on the base of the pan and thicken unevenly if the heat is too high. A gentle simmer lets them absorb milk slowly and evenly, giving a smooth sauce.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, cream, butter, onion, 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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