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Sauce

Horseradish Sauce

A cold sauce made with horseradish, eggs, vinegar, sugar, salt, and cream.

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

  1. Remove the yolks from the hard‑boiled eggs and place them in a bowl.

  2. Mash the yolks until smooth, then gradually add the vinegar while stirring until creamy.

  3. Mix in the grated horseradish, sugar, salt, and cream.

  4. Stir until well combined and 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. Vinegar + horseradishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Wine + vinegartop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,493 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

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

  5. Horseradish + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together483 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Mashed smooth, they form the creamy base that holds the sauce together.
Wine vinegar
Adds sharpness that balances the richness of the yolks and the heat of the horseradish.
Grated horseradish
Supplies the pungent heat that defines the sauce.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, softening the sharpness of the vinegar and horseradish.

The step that matters

Add the vinegar gradually while stirring. Adding vinegar slowly to mashed yolks lets the mixture emulsify and turn creamy instead of splitting or becoming lumpy.

Swap the horseradish

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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