Home › Oysters and Shellfish › Bread Sauce
Bread Sauce
Heat 1 cupful of milk, 1 tablespoonful of butter, and season with salt, pepper, and onion juice. Dry in the oven 1/3 cup of bread crumbs, taking care to toss them about so as to evenly dry and keep separate. Do not brown. Bring the milk to a boil, and stir in the bread crumbs. To be served with game or fowl.
A plain English bread sauce, made lean: the crumbs are dried rather than soaked, so the sauce stays loose and grainy rather than setting into a paste.
- The hinge: dry, do not toastThe crumbs go into a slow oven and are stirred so they dry through without colouring. The book gives no temperature. Browned crumbs would give the sauce a toasted, nutty flavour, which the instruction is explicitly avoiding.
- Measurements1 cup milk, 1 tablespoon butter, 1/3 cup bread crumbs, as written. That ratio yields a pourable sauce; for a thicker, spoonable one, use closer to 3/4 cup crumbs.
- Onion juiceAn old shortcut for onion flavour without pieces: grate a peeled onion on a fine grater and use the liquid, or press grated onion in a sieve. A teaspoon is plenty for a cup of milk. Alternatively steep half an onion in the warming milk and lift it out.
- CrumbsUse stale white bread crumbled or pulsed, crusts off. Commercial dried breadcrumbs are usually ground much finer and are often pre-toasted, which gives a pastier, darker result.
- After the crumbs go inStir over low heat only a minute or two, then let it stand off the heat five minutes to swell. Prolonged boiling with the crumbs in makes it gluey and can catch on the pan bottom.
- SeasoningSeason the milk before thickening, as written, and taste again at the end -- the crumbs absorb salt. White pepper keeps the sauce pale; a blade of mace or a clove is the traditional addition and suits roast game.
- YieldAbout one cup, enough for four servings alongside roast chicken, turkey, pheasant or partridge. It is best made just before serving; reheat with a splash of milk, as it thickens on standing.