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Sauce

Horseradish Sauce

A chilled horseradish sauce made with horseradish, mustard, bread crumbs, paprika, salt, vinegar, powdered sugar, and white sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Horseradish Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Mix all ingredients except the white sauce in a double boiler and cook until hot.

  2. Add the white sauce and mix well.

  3. Cool the mixture.

Freeze

  1. Pack and freeze until spongy.

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. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Horseradish + vinegartop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Horseradish + saucetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together775 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Mustard + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,120 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Horseradish
Provides the sharp, pungent heat that defines the sauce.
Fine bread crumbs
Thicken the mixture and give it body.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and balances the sugar.
White sauce
Adds richness and moisture, softening the sharp horseradish.

The step that matters

Freezing until spongy. The mixture must be cooled fully before packing and freezing; freezing warm or unevenly can change texture and cause ice crystals to form, so the sauce may not turn out light and spongy.

Swap the horseradish

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mustard, bread, vinegar, sugar, sauce. 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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