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Sauce

Horseradish Sauce

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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

Prepare

  1. Grate the horse-radish very finely.

Make the sauce

  1. Mix 2 tablespoons of grated horse-radish with 1 teaspoon of salt, 4 tablespoons of cream, and ⅓ cup of vinegar.

  2. Stir until well combined.

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).

  4. Horse + creamtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together87 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Cream + vinegartop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,064 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

Horse-radish
Provides the sharp, pungent heat that defines the sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and softens the sharp bite of the horseradish.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and sharpens the sauce.

The step that matters

Grate the horse-radish very finely.. Cutting the root breaks its cells and starts the reaction that creates its pungent heat. Finer grating releases more of these compounds, so the sauce tastes sharper. Adding the vinegar soon after helps set the flavor.

Swap the radish

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (horse, cream, vinegar):

  1. Radishthe original
  2. Mustardfits about as well
  3. Cucumberfits less well
  4. Horseradishfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against horse, cream, vinegar. 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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