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Sauce

Horseradish Sauce

A creamy sauce made with horseradish, eggs, cream, mustard, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 and egg mixture

  1. Scrape and grate the horseradish root until fine.

  2. In a bowl, beat the yolks of the eggs with the cream, salt, and pepper.

  3. Mix in the mustard and vinegar until well combined.

  4. Add the grated horseradish to the mixture and stir well.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter and mix in the flour over low heat until combined but not browned.

  2. Pour in the milk and stir until boiling, then remove from heat.

  3. Add the grated horseradish, salt, and nutmeg to the sauce, and boil for five minutes.

  4. Serve the sauce over dishes as desired.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Horseradish + flourtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together743 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

Eggs
Egg yolks thicken the sauce and add richness and body as they set.
Butter
Fat that carries flavour and, with flour, forms the base of a smooth sauce.
Flour
Starch that thickens the butter and milk into a smooth, stable sauce.
Milk
Liquid that forms the body of the sauce once thickened with the flour roux.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and balances the richness of the cream and butter.
Horseradish
Provides the sharp, pungent heat that gives the sauce its characteristic flavour.

The step that matters

Adding the egg mixture to the sauce. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if they meet very hot liquid too quickly. Keeping the heat low and stirring steadily helps the sauce thicken smoothly.

Swap the horseradish

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, cream, mustard, vinegar, butter, flour, milk):

  1. Shallotfits about as well
  2. Horseradishthe original
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Potatofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, cream, mustard, vinegar, butter, flour, milk. 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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