BREAD SAUCE

Common-sense cookery for English hous... · Kenney-Herbert, A. R. (Arthur Robert), 1840-1916 · 1905
Source
Common-sense cookery for English households : with twenty menus worked out in detail
Status
success · extracted 11 days ago
Not a recipe
No
Ingredients (10)
To flavour the milk
For the sauce
Instructions (10)
  1. Prepare the milk flavoring: peel a 3-ounce onion, blanch it for 5 minutes in scalding water, then cut into quarters.
  2. Combine the onion quarters, a dozen peppercorns, six cloves, a blade of mace, a pinch of grated nutmeg, a saltspoonful of salt, and at least half a pint of good milk in a saucepan.
  3. Heat the milk mixture gently over a very low fire, watching carefully as milk boils up rapidly. Remove from heat as soon as the surface looks frothy.
  4. Let the milk cool slightly, then replace it on the low fire and continue heating until the flavor is extracted, adding a little milk from time to time to compensate for evaporation.
  5. Strain the flavored milk through muslin into a clean saucepan. Keep hot in a bain-marie.
  6. Prepare stale, finely sifted white bread crumbs that have been dried in the oven.
  7. Just before serving, bring the strained milk nearly to the boil.
  8. Stir in enough dried bread crumbs, off the fire, to achieve the consistency of an ordinary purée, but no thicker.
  9. Finish the sauce by stirring in a tablespoonful of cream just before serving.
  10. Alternatively, if cream is unavailable, stir in the yolk of one egg, beaten with a little warm milk until creamy, off the fire, at the very last moment.
Original Text
BREAD SAUCE. Of the whole category of simple sauces none is more gene-rally maltreated, I think, than “bread sauce.” Delicious we know when properly made, it is positively a repulsive mess when wrongly treated. Some have no doubt lamented many a time over the wretched compound which their cooks persist in sending up under this title—a mixture which may be plainly described as spiced bread poultice. The backbone of bread sauce is the flavouring of the milk with which it is made, to begin with; that being done we have only to strain it carefully into a clean saucepan, which should be set in the bale to keep hot. Next to get ready some stale, finely sifted white crumbs that have been dried in the oven. At the time of service to bring the milk nearly to the boil, and stir into it, off the fire, sufficient crumbs to bring the mixture to the consistency of an ordinary purée, but on no account any thicker. Finally to finish it off with a good table-spoonful of cream at the moment before we serve it. In the absence of cream the yolk of one egg, beaten up in a little warm milk till it looks creamy, may be added, off the fire, just at the last, but this is a case in which cream should be used if possible. To flavour the milk you must take a three-ounce onion, peel off the outside skin, blanch it for five minutes in scalding water, then cut it into quarters, and put them, with a dozen peppercorns, six cloves, a blade of mace, a pinch of grated nutmeg, a saltspoonful of salt, into a saucepan contain-ing 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 saucepan narrowly, and use a very low fire to retard the boiling stage. Remove the pan as soon as the surface of the milk looks frothy: let it cool a little and re-place it, continuing the operation until the flavour is extracted, adding a little milk from time to time to make good the loss by evaporation. Now, strain it off through a piece of muslin into a clean saucepan, and complete the sauce as I have described.
Notes
—