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Sauce

Horseradish Sauce

A sauce made from finely grated horse-radish, salt, and vinegar.

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

Horseradish Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Grate the horse-radish very finely.

  2. Mix 2 tablespoons of grated horse-radish with 1 teaspoon of salt.

  3. Add 4 tablespoons of vinegar and stir well.

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

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

  2. Radish + vinegartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together508 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Horse + vinegartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together331 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Horseradish (in the method)
Provides the sharp, pungent heat that defines the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the heat and helps preserve the sauce's bright flavor.

The step that matters

Grate the horseradish very finely. Heat is released when the root's cell walls are broken, and finer grating exposes more of the compounds that create pungency. Adding vinegar soon after grating helps stabilize the flavor, since the sharp compounds fade with time and heat.

“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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