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Horseradish Butter

A butter-based condiment made with grated horseradish and red pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Horseradish Butter

Why it works: Horse and radish work together. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 529 recipes. Both carry 2-methylbutyraldehyde, which smells malty, chocolate. The science ↓

Horseradish Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Make the butter

  1. Pound the grated horse radish with the butter in a mortar.

  2. Season with red pepper.

  3. Rub the mixture through a fine sieve.

Store and use

  1. Store in a cool place.

  2. Do not allow the butter to boil again when added to other sauces.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Horse + radishtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together529 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  2. Radish + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together382 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Radish + buttertop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together180 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Horse + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together216 recipes

    Shared aroma: sabinene (woody, terpenic).

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

What each ingredient does

Grated horseradish
Provides the sharp, pungent flavour, released when the root is grated and crushed.
Butter
Carries the flavour and gives the sauce a smooth, rich texture.

The step that matters

Do not allow the butter to boil again when added to other sauces.. Butter is an emulsion of fat, water and milk solids. Boiling it can break the emulsion, causing it to separate, turn greasy and lose its smooth texture and flavour.

Swap the radish

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (horse, butter, pepper):

  1. Radishthe original
  2. Mustardfits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits less well
  4. Potatofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against horse, butter, pepper. 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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