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Bread Sauce

Bread sauce is a creamy sauce made from boiled milk, bread crumbs, onion, cloves, mace, salt, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,400 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Bread Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, combine the boiled milk, bread crumbs, onion, cloves, mace, and salt.

  2. Let the mixture simmer for five minutes.

  3. Stir in the butter until melted.

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 + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  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

Bread crumbs
Soak up the milk and thicken the sauce into a smooth, spoonable texture.
Boiled milk
Forms the liquid base that the bread crumbs swell in and thicken.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, glossy finish to the sauce.
Onion
Infuses the milk with a mild savoury aroma during simmering.
Cloves
Add warm, spicy aroma that flavours the milk as it simmers.

The step that matters

Let the mixture simmer for five minutes. Simmering gently lets the bread crumbs swell and soften fully and draws flavour from the onion and spices into the milk. Boiling hard can scorch the milk or make the sauce catch on the pan bottom.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, bread, onion, clove, 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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