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Another, for Roast Meat, Steaks, or Chops

A sauce made by infusing mushroom ketchup, walnut pickle, spices, and horseradish, then strained and used to flavor roast meat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Horseradish and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 376 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Another, for Roast Meat, Steaks, or Chops

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Combine mushroom ketchup or oyster ketchup, walnut pickle, Jamaica pepper, horseradish, minced shallot, and cayenne in a jar.

  2. Infuse the mixture for ten days.

  3. Strain the mixture.

  4. Bottle the strained mixture for use.

Serve

  1. Add 1 to 2 tablespoons of the mixture to gravy for flavor.

  2. Melt butter and mix the infused sauce into the melted butter.

  3. Pour the sauce over steaks or chops.

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 + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together376 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Mushroom + shallottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Walnut + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together440 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Walnut + horseradishtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together259 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Pepper + horseradishtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,646 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Mushroom ketchup or oyster ketchup
Provides concentrated savoury, umami depth as the base of the sauce.
Walnut pickle
Adds dark, tangy acidity and a sharp, savoury character.
Horseradish
Contributes pungent heat that mellows and blends during infusion.
Minced shallot
Adds mild aromatic sharpness that softens over the ten-day infusion.

The step that matters

Infuse the mixture for ten days. Flavours from the pungent and savoury ingredients need time to extract and blend into the liquid. Rushing the infusion leaves the sauce harsh and unbalanced, with the raw horseradish and shallot dominating.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mushroom, pepper, horseradish, shallot):

  1. Chestnutfits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Lentilsfits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, pepper, horseradish, shallot. 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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