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Radish Sauce, Horse

A creamy horseradish sauce made with butter, flour, broth, and grated horseradish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 743 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Radish Sauce, Horse

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, beat the butter until soft.

  2. Mix in the flour until well combined.

  3. Thin the mixture with warm broth and stir until smooth.

  4. Place the mixture in a saucepan over medium heat, stirring constantly until it begins to boil.

  5. Stir in the grated horseradish and heat without boiling.

  6. Add salt to taste and serve.

  7. Optionally, add vinegar.

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. Flour + horseradishtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together743 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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. Butter + vinegartop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,513 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Flour + vinegartop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,652 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Provides fat and richness, and with the flour forms the base that gives the sauce body.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it heats, giving it a smooth, spoonable texture.
Broth
Thins the roux-based mixture to a pourable sauce and adds savory flavour.
Grated horseradish
Supplies the sharp, pungent heat that defines the sauce.

The step that matters

Stir in the grated horseradish and heat without boiling. Horseradish loses much of its pungency when cooked for long or at a boil, and boiling can also cause a thickened sauce to separate or turn grainy. Keeping the heat gentle preserves both flavour and texture.

Swap the horseradish

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Horseradishthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, vinegar. 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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