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Sauce

Mustard Sauce

A condiment made by mixing vinegar, pepper, spices, horseradish, sugar, and mustard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Horseradish and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,832 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Mustard Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine vinegar, black pepper, cayenne pepper, ground spice, grated horseradish, sugar, and mustard in a bowl. Mix thoroughly until well combined.

  2. Transfer the mixture to a bottle for storage.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Horseradish + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Pepper + horseradishtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,646 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Vinegar + horseradishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Vinegar
Provides acidity that sharpens the flavour and balances the sugar.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the heat from the peppers and mustard.
Grated horseradish
Contributes pungent heat and sharp aroma to the sauce.
Mustard
Adds sharp flavour and body to the sauce.
Cayenne pepper
Adds direct chili heat to the sauce.

Swap the horseradish

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, pepper, sugar, mustard):

  1. Horseradishthe original
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Radishfits less well
  4. Lettucefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, pepper, sugar, mustard. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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