Traditional British Bread Sauce Recipe - Little Sunny Kitchen (2024)

FAQs

What is bread sauce made from? ›

The basic recipe calls for milk and onion with breadcrumbs and butter added as thickeners, seasoned with nutmeg, clove, bay leaf, black pepper and salt, with the meat fat from roasting often added too. The use of slightly stale bread is optimal.

Instead of using animal fat or eggs to thicken sauces as we might in contemporary recipes, the people of medieval England would use leftover stale breadcrumbs as they were cheaper and more accessible.

The Thickening Power Of Leftover Bread

Meats took center stage on these tables, but not without accompanying soups and sauces, as medieval medicine believed a meal's temperatures and textures should all maintain a certain balance. Thick bread slices were also used as "trenchers," or plates to serve food upon.

Bread Sauce is an English classic. Traditionally served alongside the roast Christmas turkey, it's equally good with roast chicken or duck. Its origins can be traced back to the middle ages when cooks needed ways to use up leftover bread and found it could be used to thicken all manner of stews, soups and sauces.

Bread sauce is based on the idea that bread is an excellent way to thicken sauces, soups, and stews and was originally created to use up leftover bread. While recipes vary, the basic formula is to infuse milk with the delicate flavor of onion, cloves, and bay leaf and then thicken it with breadcrumbs.

For the uninitiated, proper bread sauce contains nothing but bread, butter, milk and cream, an onion and some spices. It should look a little like porridge and taste creamy and mild and ever so slightly fragrant.

HP Sauce is a British brown sauce the main ingredients of which are tomatoes and tamarind extract. It was named after London's Houses of Parliament. After making its first appearance on British dinner tables in the late 19th century, HP Sauce went on to become an icon of British culture.

Brown sauce is a condiment commonly served with food in the United Kingdom and Ireland, normally dark brown in colour. The taste is either tart or sweet with a peppery taste similar to that of Worcestershire sauce. Commercial sauces are a blend of tomatoes, malt vinegar, molasses, dates, spices and tamarind.

Traditional Christmas dinner features turkey with stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, cranberry sauce, and vegetables. Other types of poultry, roast beef, or ham, are also used.

Why do we eat mashed potatoes on Christmas? ›

Mashed potatoes hold a special place during Christmas for their comforting and versatile appeal. As a timeless comfort food, they evoke a sense of tradition and togetherness, making them ideal for festive family gatherings.

In Italy they call it “scarpetta”: the art of gathering all the sauce left on your plate with a piece of bread. A delightfully Italian gesture that makes every cook happy.

Ketchup, the all-American favorite condiment, reigns supreme as the most popular sauce in the United States, followed closely by barbecue sauce and hot sauce.

Stir in the butter, season with salt, white pepper and nutmeg, then pour into a warm serving jug or bowl. Or leave to cool and chill or freeze for up to 1 month until needed.

A survivor of the medieval bread-thickened sauces, the traditional British bread sauce is made with milk, butter or cream, and bread crumbs, flavoured with onion, salt, cloves, mace, pepper, and bay leaf, with the fat from roasting often added as well. So a traditional bread sauce isn't typically vegan.

Bread is the solution and there is a method – there's even a word for it: scarpetta. Scarpetta means “l*ttle shoe” in Italian.

Sweeteners such as malt and honey are used to add flavor to bread dough. Malt, which is available in powder and liquid form, can be added to almost any bread. It's important to use a nondiastatic version, though, as diastatic malt has active enzymes, which, in excess, will make dough extremely sticky.

The French term for this medium-thick white sauce is béchamel. The foolproof way to attain a perfectly smooth sauce is to have the milk hot when added to the butter and flour. It uses an extra pot, but as you become more proficient, this cautionary measure may not be necessary.