Name: Horseradish Sauce
Ingredients: 1 cup drawn butter; 1 tablespoon grated horseradish; 1 tablespoon lemon juice

Why it works: Horseradish and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,155 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Horseradish Sauce

Ingredients

1 cup drawn butter
1 tablespoon grated horseradish
1 tablespoon lemon juice

Directions

In a bowl, combine the drawn butter with the grated horseradish and lemon juice.
Beat the mixture until it reaches a creamy consistency.

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.

Horseradish + lemontop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,155 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,227 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Butter + horseradishtop 28% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together947 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Drawn butter: Provides fat that gives the sauce a rich, smooth, creamy body.
Grated horseradish: Supplies the sharp, pungent heat and aroma that defines the sauce.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the richness of the butter.