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Horseradish Sauce

A creamy horseradish sauce made with grated horseradish, mustard, sugar, and either cream or egg yolk and olive oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Horseradish Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash, scrape, and grate the horseradish.

  2. Mix the horseradish with salt, pepper, mustard, and sugar.

Make the sauce

  1. In a bowl, beat the egg yolk and gradually add the olive oil drop by drop, then add the vinegar.

  2. Stir in the horseradish mixture and keep cool.

  3. If using cream, whisk it until it begins to thicken before adding the vinegar.

Serve

  1. Serve in small glass dishes.

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. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

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

  5. Horseradish + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,646 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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 gives the sauce its character.
Egg yolk
Acts as an emulsifier, holding the oil and liquid together as a smooth sauce.
Olive oil
Adds fat and richness, giving the sauce a smooth, creamy body.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and cuts the richness of the oil.
Prepared mustard
Adds sharpness and helps stabilise the emulsion.
Cream
Adds richness and a soft, thick texture as an alternative to the egg yolk and oil.

The step that matters

Adding the olive oil drop by drop. Oil added too quickly to the egg yolk can fail to emulsify and separate. Adding it slowly while beating lets tiny droplets disperse evenly, producing a thick, stable sauce.

“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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