Bread Sauce
1/2 cup dry bread crumbs 1 cup milk 1/2 small onion sliced 1 tablespoon butter 1/4 teaspoon salt Dash of pepper Dash of nutmeg Have the crumbs very fine and dry; put them on the fire with the milk and onion. Bring to a boil; press through a sieve; return to the fire; add the butter and seasoning and serve. This is used with roast chicken, turkey, etc.
A short English sauce that stands or falls on the crumbs: fine, dry and stale, never fresh and doughy. Everything else is seasoning.
- The crumbsUse crumbs from a day-old lean white loaf, dried in a low oven and sieved fine. Packaged seasoned crumbs or panko will not swell properly and give a gritty, salty sauce.
- Quantities1/2 cup dry crumbs to 1 cup milk makes a small quantity of sauce; the recipe gives no yield or serving count, so scale up for a large bird.
- Don't scorch the milkBring the milk, crumbs and onion up slowly over low heat, stirring; crumbs settle and catch quickly. A heavy pan or a double boiler is safer than a thin one over high heat.
- SievingPressing through a sieve is what removes the onion and any lumps and makes the texture velvety. A stick blender will smooth the crumbs but purees the onion into the sauce rather than taking it out.
- Infusing insteadModern practice is often to steep the sliced onion (sometimes stuck with a clove or two and a bay leaf) in the hot milk for 15-20 minutes off the heat, then lift it out before the crumbs go in. Cleaner flavour, no sieving.
- The stray lineThe "1 tablespoon butter, 1 tablespoon flour" at the end appears without instructions and is not used in the method; it most likely belongs to the next recipe. A roux is not needed here, since the bread does the thickening.
- Consistency and holdingThe sauce thickens as it stands and again as it cools. Slacken with a little more hot milk before serving, and keep it covered over hot water rather than on direct heat.
- SeasoningTaste after the butter goes in. Nutmeg and white pepper are traditional; salt needs a firmer hand than the 1/4 teaspoon suggests if the crumbs were unsalted.
Bread sauce is an English survival of a much older medieval habit of thickening liquids with bread rather than flour, and by the eighteenth century it is generally said to have settled into its familiar role as the accompaniment to roast poultry and game birds. The recipe also shows an economy of scale, using stale crumbs, a scrap of onion and a cup of milk to produce something that reads as a proper sauce on a menu card.