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Time Honoured Bread Sauce


Carrot Top

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“If thou tastest a crust of bread, thou tastest all the stars and all the heavens.”

Robert Browning (1812-1889) English poet

And from bread itself comes bread sauce.

Bread sauce is a quiet nonchalant sort of thing, generally most self-deprecating the year round as it awaits its seasonal turn to appear with an arrogant burst of self-confidence as it brims from fine china gravy tureens at holiday time.

Yet bread sauce holds in memory a long past, with paths meandering far and wide into other manners and means, perhaps related, perhaps simply co-existing. Yet each relation or close ally is made from the base form of bread, dashed into crumbs then set to gay dalliance with other good and warming things.

Bread sauce was known in Ancient Rome, and from there it travels on forward through time, taking different forms of style. In this essay on a 1545 Remove for a Dinner Party we find that the breadsauce has become green with herbs, similar to what we now might call salsa verde.

A hop skip and a jump brings us to the equitable joys of skordalia from Greece; gazpacho (which of course is a soup, but still we might include it for the familiarity of the humble stale bread crumb base, blended with liquids to make a fine dish); and ajo blanco, which is called the "original" gazpacho, showing a Moorish influence.

During the Civil War in the US, roast partridge with breadsauce must have been a treat, the hunters carrying home braces of partridge to roast over the coals of the fireplace or stove, the stale bread generously endowed with flavor and spice to enrichen and blend together the strong flavors of the game and the creamy sauce.

Fanny Farmer offers a recipe for bread sauce in her 1918 classic Boston Cooking School Cookbook, and our interest and curiosity in finding ways to use bread as sauce today is shown in a rustic, delightfully mouth-watering sauce povera for pasta from Italy - little cubed bread sauce and in a lovely minted bread sauce from the Naked Chef, Jamie Oliver.

The classic bread sauce served today at many Christmas dinner-tables is soft, filled with scent of nutmeg and a gentle waft of onion, as in this traditional bread sauce.

Indeed, we might need to call this recipe (as Henry James would have it) - "the time honored bread sauce of the happy ending" - though surely more shapes and surprises have yet to come.

..........................................................................................................................................

Edited to sweep up crumbs of loosened grammar. :biggrin:

Edited by Carrot Top (log)
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I have only recently been introduced to this sort of sauce, via a recipe for a polonaise sauce I did on a whim.

I think it is an absolutely brilliant concept, and that bread crumbs are a wonderful carrier for flavor. Opened up a whole new world for me at the time. Easily prepared, frugal, and just plain good! Bread sauce has it all!

Thanks for the history lesson, and the recipes! I love this sort of geeky, historical food stuff.

:biggrin:

Anne

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Stale rye or pumpernickel is crumbed and simmered with butter or pork fat, 2% milk, onions, nutmeg, crushed caraway, cayenne, salt and a generous hand with black pepper. Set aside. Cabbage, sprouts, carrot, potato, turnip, rutabaga or winter squash should find a home in your oil rubbed roasting pan for at least 45 minutes in a blazing 425 F oven. Add herbs at your discretion. Make sure that you deglaze that vegetable- sugary pan with apple cider or cider vinegar. Add the reduction to the bread sauce (minding to not add too much milk in the sauces early stages). Serve with ale-simmered brats, at least three different mustards, cabbage and your roasted vegetables of choice.

I should add that I've never made my bread sauces with anything but pork fat or butter and I imagine that, being such a thrifty sauce, it would be wonderful with beef drippings or schmaltz.

Edited by petite tête de chou (log)

Shelley: Would you like some pie?

Gordon: MASSIVE, MASSIVE QUANTITIES AND A GLASS OF WATER, SWEETHEART. MY SOCKS ARE ON FIRE.

Twin Peaks

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And from bread itself comes bread sauce.

Bread sauce is a quiet nonchalant sort of thing, generally most self-deprecating the year round as it awaits its seasonal turn to appear with an arrogant burst of self-confidence as it brims from fine china gravy tureens at holiday time.

Yet bread sauce holds in memory a long past, with paths meandering far and wide into other manners and means, perhaps related, perhaps simply co-existing. Yet each relation or close ally is made from the base form of bread, dashed into crumbs then set to gay dalliance with other good and warming things.

The classic bread sauce served today at many Christmas dinner-tables is soft, filled with scent of nutmeg and a gentle waft of onion, as in this traditional bread sauce.

I have to admit, I don't think I'd ever heard of bread sauce before this? So it was strange to read the traditional bread sauce recipe, and view the accompanying photo, with a feeling of intimate familiarity. :unsure:

Finally I realized what it was. If you stop following the Traditional Bread Sauce recipe from the Delia Online site at: "Leave the saucepan on a very low heat, stirring now and then, until the crumbs have swollen and thickened the sauce – about 15 minutes."

And instead of; "Now replace the clove-studded onion, the bay leaf and the peppercorns and again leave the pan in a warm place until the sauce is needed."

You; add one beaten egg and one and one-half pounds of ground beef/pork/veal in your favorite proportion, then pat it into a sort of football shape and bake it at 350 degrees for about an hour you'll have ....

Time Honoured Meatloaf! :shock:

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