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Sauce

Horseradish Sauce

A sauce made with horse-radish, milk or cream, butter, flour, salt, and sugar, served with fish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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

Make the sauce

  1. Heat the milk or cream in a double boiler.

  2. Rub together the butter and flour until smooth in a bowl.

  3. Stir the butter and flour mixture into the boiling milk.

  4. Add the grated horse-radish, salt, and sugar, and mix well.

Serve

  1. Serve with boiled, fresh, or salt fish.

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

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

  3. Flour + radishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together119 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. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Milk or cream
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, giving it its smooth, creamy body.
Butter and flour
Flour thickens the milk as a roux, giving the sauce body and a smooth texture.
Horse-radish
Provides the sharp, pungent heat that flavours the sauce.

The step that matters

Stir the butter and flour mixture into the boiling milk. Adding the flour paste to hot liquid while stirring disperses the starch evenly, so the sauce thickens smoothly instead of forming lumps.

Swap the radish

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

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

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