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Horseradish Sauce

A simple horseradish sauce made with grated horseradish, cream or Swiss milk, vinegar, sugar, mustard, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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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. In a bowl, mix grated horseradish with cream or tinned Swiss milk.

  2. Add vinegar, sugar, mustard, pepper, and salt, then stir until well combined.

Serve

  1. Serve as a condiment with meat.

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. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  4. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Horseradish + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,646 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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.
Cream or tinned swiss milk
Adds richness and body, softening the horseradish's bite.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens flavour and helps keep the heat stable.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar and horseradish with mild sweetness.
Prepared mustard
Adds a sharp, tangy note that rounds out the heat.

The step that matters

Combining the vinegar with the grated horseradish. Grated horseradish releases its pungent compounds when its cells are broken, and that heat fades as it sits. Acid such as vinegar helps stabilise the sharp flavour, so combine and serve without long delay.

“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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