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Sauce

Hot Horseradish Sauce

A spicy sauce made from grated horseradish, brown gravy, mustard, vinegar, spices, lemon juice, Harvey's sauce, mushroom ketchup, and port wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Hot Horseradish Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Mix grated horseradish with brown gravy and let it stand by the fire until nearly boiling.

  2. Add salt, made mustard, and vinegar of choice.

  3. For a variation, stew horseradish in vinegar for 10 minutes, drain, and mix with nearly ½ pint of thick melted butter.

  4. In a small bowl, combine cayenne pepper, salt, and sugar.

  5. Pour in lemon juice, Harvey's sauce, mushroom catsup, and port wine; mix thoroughly.

Heat and serve

  1. Heat the sauce by placing the bowl in a saucepan of boiling water.

  2. Serve immediately with meats or fish, or let it sit for a few hours for better flavor.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Horseradish + garlictop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together719 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Mustard + garlictop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Garlic + mushroomtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,700 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Grated horseradish
Provides the sharp, pungent heat that defines the sauce.
Brown gravy
Supplies the liquid base and savory body of the sauce.
Made mustard
Adds sharpness and a mild pungency that balances the richness.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and sharpens the heat.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and depth of flavor.
Lemon juice
Adds fresh acidity that lifts the other flavors.

The step that matters

Heat the sauce by placing the bowl in a saucepan of boiling water.. Gentle indirect heat warms the sauce evenly without curdling or scorching it. Pouring it over direct high heat can make it separate or turn bitter, and horseradish loses its pungency when overheated.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (horseradish, mustard, garlic, pepper, sugar, sauce, mushroom):

  1. Limefits about as well
  2. Avocadofits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Cherryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against horseradish, mustard, garlic, pepper, sugar, sauce, mushroom. 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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