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Horseradish Sauce

A creamy sauce made with eggs, flour, milk, stock, horseradish, butter, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Horseradish Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a bowl, beat the eggs and mix in the flour.

  2. Add the milk and mix well.

  3. Stir in the soup stock, pepper, and salt.

  4. Add the grated horseradish and butter.

  5. Place the mixture on the stove and bring to a boil, stirring constantly until thick.

  6. Cook in a double boiler.

Adjust and finish

  1. If the sauce is too thick, thin it with vinegar.

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

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

  2. Flour + horseradishtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together743 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pepper + horseradishtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,646 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Eggs
Thicken the sauce as they set with heat, giving it body.
Flour
Stabilises the liquid so the sauce thickens smoothly without splitting.
Milk
Adds creaminess and moisture, softening the sharp horseradish heat.
Soup stock
Supplies the savoury base liquid that carries the other flavours.
Grated horseradish
Provides the pungent, sharp flavour that defines the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother, glossier mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Bringing the sauce to a boil while stirring constantly. Egg and flour thickeners can curdle or lump if the mixture overheats or stops being stirred. Constant stirring keeps heat even so the sauce thickens smoothly as the starch and egg proteins set.

Swap the horseradish

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Horseradishthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, flour, milk, pepper, butter. 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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