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Sauce

Horseradish Sauce for Fish

A sauce made from grated horseradish, onion, water, butter, flour, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Horseradish and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,784 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Horseradish Sauce for Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Grate the horseradish and mix it with the finely chopped onion.

  2. Add the water and simmer until the onion is tender.

  3. Stir in the butter rolled in flour and bring to a boil.

Finish and serve

  1. Squeeze in a few drops of lemon juice 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.

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 + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Horseradish + flourtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together743 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 sauce.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness and body as it softens in the simmering liquid.
Butter rolled in flour
Thickens the sauce, giving it a smooth, body-rich texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sharp flavor of the horseradish.

The step that matters

Bringing the butter and flour to a boil. Flour thickens only when heated enough for its starch to swell and set. Stopping before a full boil can leave the sauce thin and floury-tasting, while over-boiling can make it thicken too much.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Limefits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against horseradish, onion, butter, flour. 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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