Name: Salad or Piquante Sauce for Cold Meat, Fish, Ac.
Ingredients: 1 ounce scraped horseradish; ½ ounce coarse sea salt; 1 tablespoon prepared mustard; 4 teaspoons minced shallots

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 ↓

Salad or Piquante Sauce for Cold Meat, Fish, Ac.

Ingredients

1 ounce scraped horseradish
½ ounce coarse sea salt
1 tablespoon prepared mustard
4 teaspoons minced shallots

Directions

Pound together the horseradish, coarse sea salt, prepared mustard, and minced shallots until well combined.
Serve the sauce with cold meat or fish.

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.

Horseradish + mustardtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,832 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Mustard + shallottop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together859 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Horseradish + shallottop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together376 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 defines the sauce.
Prepared mustard: Adds sharpness and emulsifying body that helps hold the sauce together.
Minced shallots: Contribute a mild, savory bite that softens the horseradish's raw edge.