Skip to main content
Main

Horse Radish Sauce

A creamy sauce made with horseradish, cracker crumbs, milk, butter, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Horse Radish Sauce

Why it works: Horse and radish work together. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 529 recipes. Both carry 2-methylbutyraldehyde, which smells malty, chocolate. The science ↓

Horse Radish Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a double boiler, combine cracker crumbs, grated horseradish, and milk.

  2. Cook for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.

  3. Add butter, salt, and pepper, mixing well before serving.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Horse + radishtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together529 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Radish + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together382 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Horse + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together45 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Radish + buttertop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together180 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

Cracker crumbs
Thicken the milk into a body-rich sauce as they absorb liquid and swell.
Grated horseradish
Provides the sharp, pungent heat that defines the sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the crumbs thicken and the horseradish flavours.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Cook for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally. Gentle heat in a double boiler keeps the milk from scorching or curdling while the crumbs hydrate and thicken. Stirring prevents lumps and sticking on the base.

Swap the radish

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (horse, milk, butter, pepper):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Radishthe original
  4. Mustardfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against horse, milk, butter, pepper. 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.

More horseradish sauce recipes

Hot 21Russian 6Cream 3 See all 297 →

You might also like

Horseradish ButterHorseradish Butter6 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes