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Horseradish Sauce

A cold sauce made with mustard, vinegar, horseradish, sugar, salt, cream, and milk-soaked breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,832 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Horseradish Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, dilute the mustard with vinegar.

  2. Add the grated horseradish, powdered sugar, and salt.

  3. Stir in the cream and the soaked breadcrumbs.

  4. Mix well and serve very cold with boiled or roast beef.

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. Mustard + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Vinegar + horseradishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Horseradish
Supplies the sharp, pungent heat that defines the sauce.
Cream
Adds fat and body, mellowing the sharpness into a smooth texture.
Breadcrumbs
Soaked in milk, they thicken the sauce and give it body.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the richness of the cream.
Mustard
Contributes sharp, aromatic pungency that complements the horseradish.
Powdered sugar
Adds a little sweetness to balance the heat and acidity.

The step that matters

Mix well and serve very cold. Horseradish's pungent compounds are volatile and fade quickly when warmed, so keeping the sauce cold preserves its sharp heat. Mixing thoroughly ensures the breadcrumbs and cream are evenly distributed, so the sauce has a uniform texture.

“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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