Name: Horse Radish for Winter
Ingredients: 1 cup grated horse radish; 2 tablespoons white sugar; ½ teaspoon salt; 1½ pints cold vinegar; 2 tablespoons prepared horse radish; 2 teaspoons olive oil (or melted butter or cream); 1 teaspoon prepared mustard

Why it works: Radish and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 297 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Horse Radish for Winter

Ingredients

1 cup grated horse radish
2 tablespoons white sugar
½ teaspoon salt
1½ pints cold vinegar
2 tablespoons prepared horse radish
2 teaspoons olive oil (or melted butter or cream)
1 teaspoon prepared mustard

Directions

Make the horseradish

Mix grated horseradish, white sugar, salt, and cold vinegar in a bowl.
Bottle and seal the mixture for storage.

Make the sauce

To make horseradish sauce, combine 2 tablespoons prepared horseradish with olive oil and prepared mustard in a small bowl.
Stir until well mixed and serve.

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.

Radish + mustardtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together297 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Horse + radishtop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together529 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).
Horse + mustardtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together201 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).
Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together14,067 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Olive + mustardtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,950 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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 heat that defines the condiment.
Cold vinegar: Carries the flavour and acts as a preservative for storage.
White sugar: Balances the sharpness of the vinegar and horseradish with sweetness.
Prepared mustard: Adds extra pungency and emulsifying body to the sauce.
Olive oil: Adds fat that mellows the heat and gives the sauce a smoother texture.

The step that matters

Sealing the stored horseradish. Horseradish loses its pungency quickly once cut or grated, and its flavour fades over time. Keeping the mixture tightly sealed limits contact with air and helps the heat last longer in storage.

“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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Horse Radish for Winter