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Beurre De Raifort- -horseradish Butter

A butter flavored with finely grated horseradish and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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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 ↓

Beurre De Raifort- -horseradish Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Grate the horseradish very finely.

  2. Pound the grated horseradish until smooth.

Make the butter

  1. In a bowl, combine the horseradish, softened butter, and lemon juice.

  2. Rub the mixture through a fine sieve until smooth.

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 + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Horseradish + buttertop 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

Horseradish
Provides the sharp, pungent heat that gives the butter its flavour.
Butter
Carries the horseradish and gives the spread a smooth, rich body.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the richness of the butter.

The step that matters

Rub the mixture through a fine sieve until smooth. Grated horseradish holds fibrous pieces that stay gritty if left in. Pressing the mixture through a fine sieve breaks them down and removes them, giving a silky texture.

Swap the horseradish

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Horseradishthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, lemon. 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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