Name: Benton Sauce, for Hot or Cold Roast Beef
Ingredients: 4 tablespoons vinegar; 1 tablespoon prepared mustard; 1 teaspoon grated horseradish; 1 tablespoon pounded white sugar

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 ↓

Benton Sauce, for Hot or Cold Roast Beef

Ingredients

4 tablespoons vinegar
1 tablespoon prepared mustard
1 teaspoon grated horseradish
1 tablespoon pounded white sugar

Directions

Combine vinegar, prepared mustard, grated horseradish, and pounded white sugar in a bowl and mix well until the sugar is dissolved.
Serve in a saucer alongside roast beef.

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.

Mustard + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,832 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together14,067 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Vinegar + horseradishtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,609 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together20,806 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Mustard + sugartop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,424 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Vinegar: Provides sharp acidity that balances the sweetness and sharpness of the sauce.
White sugar: Adds sweetness that softens the sharp acidity of the vinegar and mustard.
Prepared mustard: Contributes pungent flavor and some emulsifying body to the sauce.
Horseradish: Adds a sharp, pungent heat that gives the sauce its characteristic bite.

“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.