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Sauces for Roast Beef or Mutton

A creamy horseradish sauce with mustard, vinegar, and sugar, suitable for roast beef or mutton.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Sauces for Roast Beef or Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Grate horseradish into a bowl.

  2. Add cream, mustard, and salt; mix well.

  3. Stir in vinegar and mix thoroughly.

  4. Add powdered sugar to taste.

Serve

  1. Serve in a small tureen.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Horseradish + vinegartop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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.
Cream
Adds body and mellows the sharpness of the horseradish.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and helps preserve the sauce.
Mustard
Adds a sharp, savoury note that supports the horseradish heat.
Powdered sugar
Adds a little sweetness to balance the sharpness and acidity.

The step that matters

Add vinegar and mix thoroughly. Vinegar sharpens flavour and can stabilise the pungency of horseradish. Mixing it in fully ensures an even distribution, so the sauce tastes consistent rather than harsh in some spoonfuls and flat in others.

“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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