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Sauce

Another Sauce for Roast Beef

A sauce made from soy sauce, vinegar, water, horseradish, and onions, simmered for 2–3 hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Horseradish and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,784 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Another Sauce for Roast Beef

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Put the soy sauce, vinegar, water, horseradish, and sliced onions into a stone jar.

  2. Cover the jar closely and set it in a pan of cold water.

  3. When the water boils, let it simmer for 2 to 3 hours.

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 + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Vinegar + horseradishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sauce + horseradishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together775 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Vinegar + oniontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Sauce + oniontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Sauce and onion barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,474 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Soy sauce
Adds salt and savory depth to the sauce.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that sharpens the sauce and balances the savory flavors.
Horseradish
Contributes a pungent, sharp aroma and heat.
Onions
Add aromatic flavor that mellows and blends into the liquid over long cooking.

The step that matters

Covered simmer in a water bath. Setting the closed jar in a pan of water keeps the heat gentle and even, so the liquid does not boil hard or reduce unevenly. The cover traps steam, which helps the flavors blend slowly over the long simmer.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sauce, vinegar, horseradish):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, vinegar, horseradish. 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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