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Hot Horseradish Sauce

A creamy sauce made with grated horseradish, flour, butter, cream, and egg yolk, served hot with roast beef.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Hot Horseradish Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a small cooking pot, combine grated horseradish, flour, salt, paprika, and butter.

  2. Pour in the cream and cook over medium heat, stirring constantly until thick and smooth.

  3. Move the pot to the back of the stove and quickly stir in the egg yolk.

  4. Cook for an additional 30 seconds and serve immediately with hot roast beef.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Horseradish + flourtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together743 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the cream into a smooth, stable sauce as it cooks.
Cream
Provides the liquid base and richness of the sauce.
Egg yolk
Adds richness and body to the sauce when stirred in off the heat.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour and helps the sauce feel smooth.
Grated horseradish
Supplies the sharp, pungent heat that defines the sauce.

The step that matters

Stir in the egg yolk off the heat. Egg yolk can curdle or scramble if it meets high heat directly. Moving the pot to the back of the stove and stirring quickly lets it blend in and thicken gently without turning grainy.

Swap the horseradish

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, cream, egg):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Horseradishthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, cream, egg. 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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