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Sauce

Bread Sauce

A savory sauce made with onion, cloves, bread crumbs, milk, egg whites, powdered sugar, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Bread Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Cook the onion and cloves with the bread crumbs in the milk over hot water for 1 hour.

  2. Remove the onion and cloves.

Finish and serve

  1. Gradually add the powdered sugar to the egg whites.

  2. Fold the sugar into the mixture.

  3. Serve the sauce warm.

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 + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

  3. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Onion + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,676 recipes

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

  5. Clove + breadtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,129 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Fine bread crumbs
Soften in the hot milk and thicken it into a smooth, body-rich sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the crumbs soak up and thicken.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the savory onion and cloves.
Cloves
Infuse warm aromatic flavor into the milk during the long cook.

The step that matters

Cook gently over hot water. Heating milk and bread crumbs slowly over hot water, rather than over direct heat, lowers the risk of scorching and sticking. The long, gentle cook lets the crumbs soften fully and the flavors infuse evenly.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, bread, milk, egg, sugar. 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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