Bread Sauce

The story

Bread sauce sounds like a dish from another century, and for the most part it is. Milk is slowly simmered with an onion studded with whole cloves, then thickened with breadcrumbs, a recipe that has been made almost unchanged in Britain and Ireland since the Middle Ages, before tomatoes and other New World ingredients had even reached the European kitchen. It is served with roast poultry, goose or turkey, as a mild, creamy counterweight to the stronger flavors of stuffing and gravy. Many people outside the British Isles find it odd precisely because it is so plain and restrained at a time when sauces keep getting spicier, but for Irish families its mildness is the point: a contrast that resets the palate between bites of richer dishes. The cloves are usually taken out of the onion before serving, though in some families they stay in as small, spicy surprises, a test of which guest is paying attention.