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Horseradish Sauce

A sauce made from grated horseradish, mustard, salt, oil, vinegar, and egg yolk.

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 ↓

Horseradish Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the horseradish

  1. Wash and scrub the horseradish, then soak it in cold water for about 1 hour.

  2. Scrape the horseradish very finely with a sharp knife.

  3. Mix 2 tablespoons of the grated horseradish with the salt and mustard.

Make the sauce

  1. Beat the egg yolk and gradually work in the oil and vinegar.

  2. Combine all ingredients well and serve in a sauce tureen.

  3. If serving with hot roast beef or fish, heat the sauce in a small jar placed in a saucepan of boiling water before serving.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Horseradish + eggtop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together694 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  5. Egg + mustardtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,210 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolk
Emulsifies the oil and vinegar, giving the sauce a thick, smooth body.
Salad oil
Adds richness and fat, helping the egg yolk form a smooth emulsion.
Vinegar
Adds sharpness that balances the richness and pungency of the horseradish.
Grated horseradish
Provides the sharp, pungent heat that defines the sauce.
Mustard
Adds sharpness and helps stabilise the emulsion.

The step that matters

Beat the egg yolk and add the oil and vinegar gradually. Adding the oil too quickly can overwhelm the egg yolk, so the emulsion breaks and the sauce turns thin and oily instead of thick and smooth. Slow, steady addition lets the yolk hold the fat in tiny droplets.

“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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