Name: Horseradish Sauce
Ingredients: 2 teaspoons olive oil or cream; 2 teaspoons powdered mustard; 1 tablespoon vinegar; 2 tablespoons scraped horse-radish; coarse sea salt to taste

Why it works: Mustard and radish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 297 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Horseradish Sauce

Ingredients

2 teaspoons olive oil or cream
2 teaspoons powdered mustard
1 tablespoon vinegar
2 tablespoons scraped horse-radish
coarse sea salt to taste

Directions

Make the sauce

In a bowl, combine olive oil or cream, powdered mustard, vinegar, and scraped horse-radish.
Add coarse sea salt to taste, then stir and beat the mixture until thoroughly combined.

Serve

Serve the sauce separately in a sauce tureen.

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.

Mustard + radishtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together297 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Horse + radishtop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together529 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).
Mustard + horsetop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together201 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).
Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together14,067 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Olive + mustardtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,950 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Horse-radish: Provides the sharp, pungent heat that defines the sauce.
Powdered mustard: Adds sharpness and pungency that complements the horseradish heat.
Vinegar: Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the richness of the fat.
Olive oil or cream: Adds fat and body, mellowing the sharpness of the horseradish and mustard.

“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.