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Bread Sauce
Cook in double boiler half a pint of milk with a small onion and two cloves. Strain, put in saucepan, and add half a cup grated white bread-crumbs from the inside of the loaf, mixed to a paste with some of the hot milk. Let boil a few minutes, stirring and blending well. Add one-fourth teaspoonful salt, a dash of cayenne, and a small piece of butter just before taking up. Serve with boiled fowl. Two teaspoonfuls chopped parsley may be added if desired.
A simple English sauce that depends almost entirely on the quality of the crumb and on not letting it get gluey. A few notes on the measures and the method.
- Half a pint of milkAn American half-pint is one cup (240 ml). Whole milk gives the right body; skimmed milk makes a thin, chalky sauce.
- Infuse, don't rushThe double boiler is there so the milk takes on the onion and clove without scorching or forming a skin. The recipe sets no time; the point is gentle heat rather than a hard boil, and the milk is strained before the crumbs go in. Some cooks stud the peeled onion with the cloves so both come out together.
- The crumbsGrated crumb from the inside of a day-old white loaf, not dried crumbs from a canister and not commercial breadcrumbs, which are toasted and will stay gritty. Half a cup of fresh crumb is roughly 25-30 g, loosely packed.
- Mix to a paste firstThis is the hinge. Slaking the crumbs with a little hot milk before they meet the pan prevents lumps and keeps the sauce from seizing into a paste in the saucepan.
- A few minutes onlyTwo to four minutes of gentle simmering is enough to swell the crumbs. Longer and the sauce thickens past the point of pouring; loosen it with a spoonful of hot milk or cream if that happens.
- Butter at the end"A small piece" is unspecified; something on the order of a tablespoon suits this quantity. Adding it at the last moment, as the recipe directs, gives the sauce its gloss. Nutmeg or mace appears in many other versions of bread sauce, though this one seasons only with salt and cayenne.
- YieldAbout a cup, enough for four servings alongside a boiled or roast bird. It should coat a spoon and slide off, not mound on it.
Bread sauce is among the older surviving English sauces, related to the medieval practice of thickening liquids with bread rather than with roux or starch, and it stayed in use beside roast and boiled poultry after flour-based sauces became general elsewhere. It asks for almost nothing beyond milk, an onion and two cloves. Note that the recipe specifies the soft interior crumb of a loaf and says nothing about the bread being stale or left over. The clove-and-onion infusion is traditional and appears in English cookery writing from at least the eighteenth century.