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A savory sauce made with mustard, horseradish, vinegar, oil or butter, stock, and wine, suitable for brown sauces.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Sauces

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Combine mustard, horseradish, salt, pepper, vinegar, and oil or butter in a saucepan.

  2. Stew the mixture together well.

  3. Add a little stock and thickening material as needed.

  4. Incorporate wine for additional flavor.

Add extra flavor

  1. For brown sauces, include shallots, carrots, mushrooms, egg yolks, herbs, garlic, cloves, and mustard.

  2. Extract flavor from giblets and bones by crushing and stewing them thoroughly.

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. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Horseradish + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,646 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Horseradish + vinegartop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavor that cuts through the richness of the fat.
Horseradish
Contributes a sharp, pungent heat that gives the sauce its character.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the fat.
Oil or butter
Provides fat that gives the sauce a smooth, rounded body and mouthfeel.
Thickening material
Thickens the liquid so the sauce clings to food.

The step that matters

Stew the mixture together well. Gentle, thorough simmering blends the mustard, horseradish, vinegar and fat into one emulsified sauce. Stewing too hard or too briefly can leave it separated or harsh-tasting.

Swap the horseradish

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

  1. Shallotfits about as well
  2. Horseradishthe original
  3. Radishfits about as well
  4. Capsicumfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against mustard, pepper, vinegar, butter, wine. 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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