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For Cold Meat or Fish

A spicy horseradish relish made with mustard, onion, celery seed, cayenne pepper, and vinegar.

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 ↓

For Cold Meat or Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Make the relish

  1. Pound the horseradish, salt, mustard, onion, celery seed, and cayenne pepper together in a mortar.

  2. Gradually add the vinegar and let the mixture stand for a week.

Strain and bottle

  1. Strain through a sieve and bottle for use.

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 + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Mustard + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  5. Horseradish + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together835 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 relish.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that tempers the sharpness and helps keep the heat stable.
Mustard
Adds a tangy, sharp bite that supports the horseradish.
Onion
Adds savoury aroma and a mild bite to the mixture.

The step that matters

Standing for a week. Horseradish's heat comes from compounds released when its cells are crushed, and they fade quickly in air. Adding vinegar and letting the mixture stand lets the acid stabilise that pungency while the flavours blend, so the relish should not be used too early.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Lettucefits better
  2. Broccolifits better
  3. Radishfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against horseradish, mustard, celery, pepper, 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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