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BREAD SAUCE (another way) (Cut a French roll one day old)
Cut a French roll, one day old, into thick slices. Put them into a clean saucepan; add a few peppercorns, one whole onion, a little salt, and boiling milk enough to cover it. Let it simmer gently by the side of the fire till the bread soaks up the milk; then add a little cream, take out the onions, and rub the whole through a sieve. Serve very hot.
A crumb-free version of bread sauce: the bread is cooked whole in milk and then sieved, giving a smooth pouring sauce rather than the grainy kind. A few notes on translating the method to a modern stove.
- Quantities to work fromThe original gives none. For a sauce to serve six with roast chicken or game, use about 4 oz (115 g) of day-old crustless bread, 1 pint (475 ml) of milk, one small peeled onion, six peppercorns, a good pinch of salt and 2-3 tablespoons of cream at the end.
- "By the side of the fire"That means the cool edge of a range top, where a pan holds below a simmer without attention. On a modern hob, the lowest setting with a heat diffuser. Milk left over direct heat catches and scorches, and a scorched bread sauce is very hard to rescue.
- The French rollA plain white yeasted roll with a firm crumb, not a modern baguette and not a brioche. Any good white bread a day old will do; fresh bread turns to paste and sourdough or seeded loaves throw the flavour off. Crusts may be cut away for a paler sauce.
- Onion and peppercornsBoth are flavourings to be removed, not eaten. Stick the whole onion with three or four cloves if you want the usual English version, and put the peppercorns in a small piece of muslin so they can be lifted out rather than caught by the sieve.
- SievingPush the softened bread through a fine sieve with the back of a ladle, or use a food mill. A blender gives a gluey result.
- ConsistencyBread sauce thickens sharply as it stands and again as it cools. Take it off looking slightly loose, and slacken with a little hot milk before serving if it has set up.
- ServingVery hot, in a warmed sauceboat, with roast chicken, turkey, pheasant or partridge. About 1 pint serves six.
Bread sauce is one of the oldest surviving English sauces, descended from the medieval habit of thickening with bread rather than roux, and it lingered on the roast-bird menu long after flour and butter had taken over everywhere else. Cassell's gives more than one version: the quick crumb method and this smoother sieved one. That a book of this period specifies a French roll "one day old" is a reminder that bread was bought or baked daily, and that stale bread had recognised, catalogued uses in a kitchen where nothing was thrown out.