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Bread Sauce

Bread sauce is a creamy sauce made with onion, milk, stale bread, butter, salt, pepper, and optional cayenne and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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

Cook the onion

  1. Slice the onion very thin and place it in a pot with broth or water. Boil until tender.

Thicken the sauce

  1. Add enough bread crumbs to thicken the mixture, along with the butter, salt, and pepper.

  2. Stir in the cream if using, and boil until thick and smooth, but not too thick to pour.

Alternative method

  1. Alternatively, grate a teaspoon of fresh onion and mix it with the bread crumbs before pouring the boiling milk over them.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Stale white bread
Its starch absorbs liquid and swells, thickening the sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that gives the sauce its creamy body.
Butter
Adds fat for a smooth, rich mouthfeel and flavour.
Onion
Contributes aroma and a mild sweetness as it softens when boiled.
Cream
Adds extra richness and smoothness when used.

The step that matters

Stop boiling when the sauce is thick but still pourable. Bread starch keeps absorbing liquid and thickening as the sauce cools, so boiling it too long can leave it stiff and pasty.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

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