Bread Sauce

Bread sauce has a long pedigree stretching back to medieval spiced sauces thickened with bread and almonds. It is usually served warm as an accompaniment to roast chicken and turkey and game birds You can buy bread sauce mixes but the recipe is very simple and far nicer. Bread sauce is made with milk or milk and cream, butter and stale bread crumbs, flavoured with onion, cloves, bay leaf and mace or nutmeg.

Bread Sauce sufficient for a large Roast Bird

½ day-old Loaf of unsliced White Bread

500 ml Full Fat Milk

1 Small Onion, peeled

2 Cloves

1 Bay Leaf

2 Blades of Mace

6 White Peppercorns

½ teaspoon Sea Salt

30 gr Butter

2 tablespoon Double Cream

¼ teaspoon freshly grated Nutmeg

Remove the crust from the bread and cut the bread into half inch cubes. Set a medium sized, heavy bottomed saucepan over a moderate heat and add the milk. Make a cloute from the onion, bay leaf and cloves and place in the milk with the peppercorns, mace, and salt. Bring up to the boil and remove from the heat. Cover the pan with a lid and let the ingredients infuse for at least half an hour. You can infuse the milk for several hours so this stage can be prepared well in advance of the actual serving time.

After the milk has infused, strain into a second pan and place back on a very low heat. Add the bread to the saucepan and cook for about fifteen minutes, stirring every now and then, by which time the sauce should have become thick and warm. Immediately before serving add the butter to the saucepan and stir until the butter has melted and combined with the sauce. Add the cream, nutmeg and correct the seasoning if required and serve in a warm sauceboat.