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Sauce

Hot Horseradish Sauce

A spicy sauce made from grated horseradish, brown gravy, mustard, vinegar, and optional butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Horseradish and mustard 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 ↓

Hot Horseradish Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mix the grated horseradish with the brown gravy.

  2. Let the mixture stand by the fire until it is nearly boiling.

  3. Add salt if needed, the made mustard, and the vinegar.

  4. For a variation, stew the horseradish in vinegar for 10 minutes, then drain and mix with melted butter.

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. Horseradish + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Horseradish + garlictop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together719 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Mustard + garlictop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  4. Garlic + buttertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,572 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Mustard + buttertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,003 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Horseradish
Provides the sharp, pungent heat that defines the sauce.
Brown gravy
Forms the liquid base that carries the horseradish and adds savory depth.
Made mustard
Adds sharpness and a little extra heat to balance the gravy.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and sharpens the horseradish flavor.

The step that matters

Letting the mixture stand by the fire until nearly boiling. Heat releases the volatile compounds that give horseradish its pungency, but prolonged boiling drives them off and dulls the sharp flavor. Gentle heating keeps the sauce hot and lively.

Swap the garlic

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (horseradish, mustard, butter):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Dillfits better
  4. Garlicthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against horseradish, mustard, 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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