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Bread Sauce
To one pint of milk add half a cup of fine, stale bread crumbs, a small onion with six cloves stuck
The text as printed breaks off mid-sentence, so what survives is the infusion stage of a standard English bread sauce. The proportions given are sound and the rest of the method is well documented elsewhere.
- The measurementsA pint of milk is 16 fl oz (2 cups) by American measure, 20 fl oz if the book is following English practice; the half cup of crumbs is by loose volume rather than weight. Either way the ratio gives a pourable sauce rather than a paste.
- "Fine, stale bread crumbs"This means dry crumbs rubbed from a day-or-two-old white loaf, not the sandy commercial crumb and not panko. Fresh crumbs from soft bread will swell into a gluey mass; if that is all you have, dry them briefly in a low oven first.
- The onion and clovesThe clove-studded onion is an infusing device, not an ingredient to be eaten. It goes into the milk whole, is left to steep off the heat or at the barest simmer for 15 to 20 minutes, and is lifted out and discarded before serving.
- Heat is the hingeMilk thickened with bread scorches on the bottom long before it looks like it is in trouble. A double-boiler or water-pan arrangement largely prevents this; over direct heat, keep it very low and stir.
- Finishing, which the text omitsBread sauce is conventionally seasoned with salt, white pepper and a grating of nutmeg or mace, then enriched with a tablespoon or two of butter and sometimes a spoonful of cream at the end. Without salt and butter it tastes of nothing.
- ConsistencyIt thickens noticeably as it stands and again as it cools. Make it slightly looser than you want it and slacken with hot milk before serving.
- Yield and servingA pint of milk makes enough for four to six as an accompaniment. Serve hot, in a warmed boat, with roast chicken, turkey or game birds.
Bread sauce is one of the oldest surviving English sauces, descended from the medieval practice of thickening with bread rather than flour or roux, and by the eighteenth century it was well established as a companion to roast poultry and game. At the turn of the twentieth century the chafing dish was fashionable equipment for informal suppers and late-evening entertaining, and its double-boiler arrangement suited exactly this sort of milk-based preparation that will catch and scorch on a direct flame. The clove-stuck onion is the same device the French call an oignon clouté, and it remains the standard method in British kitchens at Christmas.