Bread Sauce

Ingredients

• a good sized white onion
• a dozen pepper corns
• six cloves
• a blade of mace
• a pinch of grated nutmeg
• a salt-spoonful of salt
• not less than half a pint of good milk
• a good table-spoonful of cream
• the stale bread-crumbs you have already prepared

Method

1. 1

   Peel and quarter the onion, add to milk with spices.

2. 2

   Heat carefully, strain over breadcrumbs, reheat, and finish with cream.

Nutrition per serving

As published

This recipe was extracted from Culinary jottings (1885) by A. R. Kenney-Herbert, page 50. The excerpt below is the record exactly as published.

bread-sauce." Deli- cious when properly made, it is positively a re- pulsive mess when wrongly treated. You have no doubt lamented many a time over the wretched compound which your cook persists in sending up under this title ; and I have heard people say that true "bread-sauce" cannot be made in India. Now, I have tasted quite as nasty a com- position as Ramasamy's in England, in fact even there you more frequently get it bad, than good. The good " bread- sauce," now served at the junior United Service Club in London, is due to the admonitions of an officer, once well known in Madras. The system pursued by the ignorant cook may be thus described : — he cuts some slices of bread, or grates bread- crumbs enough for his requirements, over which he pours a tea-cupful of boiling ivater, he gives that a pinch of salt, perhaps (but by no means for certain) a spoonful of milk, and a quantity of whole pepper corns, and cloves ; he stirs this to the consistency of thick porridge, and finally sends up a mixture which may be plainly described as spiced bread poultice ! Setting aside other considerations for a moment, can anything be more disagreeable than the accidental biting 88 CULINARY JOTTINGS FOR MADRAS. of a ichole clove, or a pepper corn, in any dish or sauce ? Common sense accordingly dictates that when the use of these condiments is necessary, vre should strain the liquid in which they have been placed befoi^ serving it. The back-bone of " bread-sauce" is the flavouring of the milk with which it is made, to begin with ; that done, to strain it carefully over your grated crumbs ; then to re-heat it, and finish it off with a good table-spoonful of creavi at the moment you serve it. In the absence of cream, the yolk of one egg, beaten up in a little milk till it looks creamy, may be added, off the fire, just at the last> but cream should be used if possible. To flavour the milk, you must take a good sized white onion, peel off the outside skin, cut it into quarters, and pnt them, with a dozen pepper coras, six cloves, a blade of mace, a pinch of gi\ated nutmeg, and a salt-spoonful of salt, into a sauce-pan containing not less than half a pint of good milk. The utmost care is now necessary, for milk boils up so rapidly that you must watch your sauce-pan narrowly, and use a very low fire to retard the boiling- stage. Remove the pan as soon as the sui'face of the milk looks frothy : let it cool a little, and replace it, continuing the operation until the onion is done, and adding a little milk from time to time to make good the loss by evapora- tion. Now, strain it off through a piece of muslin into a bowl, and add to it, spoonful by spoonful, the stale bread- crumbs you have abeady prepared

Cook this with the app: pantry check, scaling, and the assistant.