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Hot Horseradish Sauce

A spicy sauce made from grated horseradish, brown gravy, mustard, vinegar, cayenne, sugar, lemon, Harvey's sauce, mushroom catsup, and port wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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

Make the base

  1. Mix grated horseradish with brown gravy and let it stand by the fire until just boiling.

  2. Add salt, mustard, and vinegar to the mixture.

  3. Stew horseradish in vinegar for 10 minutes, then drain it.

  4. Mix the drained horseradish with melted butter.

Finish the sauce

  1. In a small bowl, combine cayenne pepper, salt, and sugar.

  2. Pour in lemon juice, Harvey's sauce, mushroom catsup, and port wine; mix thoroughly.

  3. Heat the sauce by placing the bowl in a saucepan of boiling water.

  4. Serve immediately with meats or store for several days.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Garlic + mushroomtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,700 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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
Supplies the liquid and savory base that carries the other flavors.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and cuts through the richness.
Lemon juice
Adds bright acidity that lifts the sauce and balances its sweetness.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and depth of flavor to the sauce.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that softens the sharpness of horseradish and vinegar.

The step that matters

Stewing the horseradish in vinegar. A short simmer in vinegar softens the raw bite of horseradish, but overcooking dulls the volatile pungency that gives the sauce its heat. Watch the 10 minutes closely.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (horseradish, mustard, garlic, pepper, sugar, sauce, mushroom):

  1. Limefits about as well
  2. Avocadofits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Cherryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against horseradish, mustard, garlic, pepper, sugar, sauce, mushroom. 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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