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Horseradish Sauce

A sauce made from grated horseradish, broth, egg yolks, vinegar, zest, pepper, salt, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Horseradish and tarragon share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 73 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Horseradish Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Grate the horseradish root finely until you have 1 cup.

  2. Simmer the grated horseradish in 2 cups of broth.

  3. In a bowl, beat the egg yolks with the tarragon vinegar.

Make the sauce

  1. Thicken the broth over low heat with the egg yolk mixture.

  2. Add the horseradish zest, pepper, salt, and nutmeg.

  3. Serve hot in a sauceboat.

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 + tarragontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together73 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Tarragon + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together213 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Tarragon + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Tarragon + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,547 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

Grated horseradish root
Provides the sharp, pungent heat that defines the sauce.
Egg yolks
Thicken the broth as they heat, giving the sauce a smooth, rich body.
Broth
Forms the liquid base that carries the horseradish flavor and is thickened into the sauce.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the richness of the yolks.

The step that matters

Thicken the broth over low heat with the egg yolk mixture. Egg yolks set when heated, but at high heat or too quickly they can scramble and curdle. Gentle low heat and steady stirring keep the sauce smooth and thickened.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Dillfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against horseradish, egg, tarragon, vinegar, pepper. 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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