hypatia dot ca

My Mum is English by ancestry, and has for a number of years been making one of her family’s traditional recipes to go with Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner. I think it’s really yummy, so I asked her if I could share it.  Here it is, mostly verbatim – I just separated out a list of ingredients for easier shopping.

English Bread Sauce

Ingredients

• 10-15 cloves
• 1 medium onion
• 3 cups milk
• 1 tsp salt
• 1-2 cups bread crumbs (the ones you can get pre-made at the grocery store work, but bakery ones are better :) )
• butter

Directions

• Stick the cloves in the onion.
• Add onion to milk in a saucepan.
• Simmer for about one hour on low heat, so that milk is infused with the onion-clove flavour. Do not boil.
• Remove onion and discard.
• Add salt and about 1 cup bread crumbs, and simmer over low heat.  Again, do not  boil.
• The crumbs will swell up, and the sauce should have a thick consistency. If it is too runny after simmering for a few minutes, add some more bread crumbs.

Serve with turkey, ideally with more bread crumbs, these ones fried in butter.  About a half cup should be enough – use whatever you have left.