How do I make bread sauce?

Bread sauce is one of the oldest things still eaten in Britain — a medieval way of thickening a sauce with bread rather than flour. It is very easy to make badly, and the difference between the beige paste people remember from childhood and a good one is entirely in the infusion and in not letting it dry out.

What you'll need

• Whole milk
• Onion and whole cloves
• Bay leaf and peppercorns
• Stale white bread
• Butter
• Double cream (optional)
• Nutmeg

Step by step

1. Infuse the milk properly — this is the whole sauce.Peel an onion, cut it in half, and stud each half with three or four whole cloves. Put it in a pan with 500ml of whole milk, a bay leaf and a few peppercorns. Bring it to just below a simmer, take it off the heat, cover, and leave for at least thirty minutes. An hour or overnight in the fridge is better.
2. Use stale white bread with the crusts off.A day or two old, blitzed to coarse crumbs or torn small. Fresh bread makes a gluey sauce because it is too wet. Sourdough and wholemeal both taste wrong here — plain white is correct.
3. Strain the milk and discard the aromatics.Or leave the onion in if you like a stronger flavour and are going to blend it. Most versions strain, so the sauce is pale and smooth with only the perfume of clove and onion.
4. Stir the crumbs into the warm milk and heat gently.About 100g of crumbs to 500ml of milk to start with. Warm it over a low heat, stirring, for five to ten minutes. The bread swells and the sauce thickens as it goes. Do not boil it.
5. Judge the consistency loosely.It should drop softly off a spoon. It thickens considerably as it stands and again as it cools, so stop while it still looks slightly too loose. Add more milk whenever it tightens.
6. Finish with butter, cream, salt and nutmeg.A generous knob of butter and a splash of double cream off the heat, plenty of salt — it needs more than you expect — white pepper and a good grating of nutmeg. Taste and season properly; an under-seasoned bread sauce is what gives it its reputation.
7. Keep it warm in a covered dish, and loosen before serving.It skins and stiffens if left uncovered. Cover the surface directly, and stir in a splash of hot milk just before it goes to the table.

Tips

• Infuse the milk the day before. It costs nothing on the day and the flavour is noticeably better.
• Three or four cloves is plenty for 500ml. Clove is assertive and a heavily cloved bread sauce tastes medicinal.
• Make it ahead and reheat gently with extra milk. It reheats far better than most sauces and it always needs loosening.
• It freezes acceptably and comes out thick — thaw, reheat with milk and whisk.
• Bread sauce is traditionally served with roast chicken, turkey and game. It suits any roast bird, not just Christmas.

Common mistakes

• Skipping the infusion and adding onion powder or ground cloves — The whole character of the sauce is the perfume of the infused milk. Ground spices give a gritty texture and a harsher flavour.
• Using fresh bread — Fresh bread is too wet and its gluten makes the sauce gluey. Stale bread absorbs milk and stays distinct.
• Under-seasoning it — It is a bland-tasting sauce by design and needs a surprising amount of salt, pepper and nutmeg to come alive. Most disappointing bread sauce is simply unseasoned.

Questions people ask