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Sauce

Horseradish Sauce

A cold sauce of grated horseradish, vinegar, mashed hard-boiled egg yolks, sugar, salt and cream, served with roast meat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Horseradish Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Remove the yolks from the whites of the hard-boiled eggs.

  2. In a bowl, mash the yolks with a wooden spoon until smooth.

  3. Gradually add the vinegar while stirring until creamy.

  4. Mix in the grated horseradish, sugar, salt, and finally the cream, then stir a little longer.

Serve

  1. Serve 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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. White wine + vinegartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,776 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. White wine + creamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,760 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Hard-boiled eggs
Yolks mashed into a smooth base that gives the sauce its body.
White wine vinegar
Adds sharpness that balances the richness of the yolks and cream.
Grated horseradish
Supplies the pungent, sharp heat that defines the sauce.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, softening the sharpness of the horseradish.

The step that matters

Adding the vinegar gradually. Adding vinegar slowly while stirring lets the mashed yolks emulsify into a smooth, creamy base. Pouring it in all at once can leave the mixture lumpy or split.

Swap the horseradish

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (white wine, vinegar, egg, sugar, cream):

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Mustardfits about as well
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Horseradishthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against white wine, vinegar, egg, sugar, cream. 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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