Sauces
Bread Sauce
The creamy, clove-scented British sauce for roast turkey and chicken: whole milk infused with an onion studded with cloves, bay and peppercorns, thickened with crustless day-old white bread and finished with butter, a spoonful of double cream and freshly grated nutmeg.
- Serves 8
- Makes about 700 ml
- Hands-on 20 min, plus infusing
- Make up to 2 days ahead
- Freezes (add the cream later)
- British
Method
Press the cloves (8) into the cut sides of the onion halves (1 onion). Put them in a saucepan with the milk (600 ml), bay leaves (2 bay leaves), peppercorns (a little) and a good pinch of salt.
Bring slowly to just below the boil, watching closely as milk rises suddenly. Take the pan off the heat, cover with a lid and leave to infuse for at least 30 minutes; 1 to 2 hours gives a deeper flavour, and the pan can sit at the back of the hob while the turkey roasts.
Meanwhile, turn the bread (150 g) into crumbs. Tear it into pieces and pulse in a food processor to coarse crumbs, or grate a firm, stale loaf on the large holes of a box grater. For a more rustic sauce, tear it into 1–2 cm pieces instead.
Lift out the onion, bay leaves and peppercorns with a slotted spoon (or strain the milk into a clean pan) and keep the onion to one side.
Set the pan over a low heat, stir in the crumbs and half the butter (40 g) and cook gently for 10–15 minutes, stirring now and then, until the bread has swollen and the sauce is thick and soft. For extra flavour, tuck the clove-studded onion back in while it cooks and remove it before serving.
Just before serving, beat in the rest of the butter, the cream (30 ml) and the nutmeg (¼ tsp). Taste and season with salt and pepper (to taste). If it has become too thick, loosen it with a splash of hot milk; it should fall softly from a spoon.
Pour into a warm jug or bowl, grate over a little more nutmeg and serve with roast turkey, chicken, pheasant or guinea fowl.
Tip: tap a step to tick it off as you cook.
See also
Chef’s notes
- Make ahead: cook to the end of step 5, cool, cover and chill for up to 2 days. It thickens as it stands, so make it a little looser than you want and reheat gently with a splash of milk before adding the cream and nutmeg.
- To freeze, cool the sauce without the cream and freeze for up to 1 month. Thaw overnight in the fridge, reheat gently with a little milk, then finish with the cream.
- Use bread that is a day or two old: very fresh bread turns gluey. Ordinary sliced white works; ciabatta or a crustless French stick gives a lighter sauce.
- Not keen on cloves? Use 4 instead of 8, or leave them out and add more nutmeg. A blade of mace or a few thyme sprigs in the milk are good additions.
- Leftover bread sauce is good cold in turkey sandwiches, or spread under the cheese in a toasted sandwich with leftover turkey and cranberry sauce.
How this recipe was developed
We compared bread sauce from Gordon Ramsay, Jamie Oliver, Nigella Lawson, Delia Smith and James Martin with the best-rated versions on BBC Good Food and BBC Food.
- A long infusion. Delia Smith infuses the milk for two hours or more and Gordon Ramsay for at least an hour; Jamie Oliver and James Martin (BBC Food, 4.6/5, 29 ratings) manage with 15 minutes. We ask for at least 30 minutes and suggest one to two hours.
- Halved onion studded with cloves. Delia Smith halves the onion so the cloves sit in the cut faces, and puts it back into the finished sauce for extra flavour; Gordon Ramsay says the cloves can simply go into the pan loose.
- Day-old white bread. Nigella Lawson (BBC Food, 4.8/5, 6 ratings) uses crustless day-old bread torn into cubes; Jamie Oliver uses ciabatta crumbs. We give both crumbs and torn pieces.
- Butter in two goes, cream to finish. Delia Smith adds half the butter with the crumbs and beats in the rest with 2 tablespoons of double cream at the end; BBC Good Food’s easy bread sauce (4.7/5, 8 ratings) adds cream and plenty of nutmeg.
- Make ahead and freeze. James Martin and Jamie Oliver make it looser if cooking ahead because it thickens on standing; Delia Smith freezes it without the cream. Both tips are in our notes.
Sources we compared (ratings as shown on each site on 31 October 2026):
- Gordon Ramsay: Bread Sauce
- Jamie Oliver: Beautiful bread sauce
- BBC Food (Nigella Lawson): Nigella’s bread sauce (4.8/5, 6 ratings)
- Delia Online (Delia Smith): Traditional Bread Sauce
- BBC Food (James Martin): Easy bread sauce (4.6/5, 29 ratings)
- BBC Good Food (Miriam Nice): Easy bread sauce (4.7/5, 8 ratings)
This is an original Cookeryonline recipe written in our own words. Ingredient choices and techniques are credited above; no source text has been copied.