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Sauce

Hot Horseradish Sauce

A spicy sauce made from grated horseradish, brown gravy, mustard, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 the grated horseradish with the brown gravy.

  2. Let it stand by the fire until it is about to boil.

  3. Add salt if needed, mustard, and vinegar.

Finish

  1. Stew the horseradish in vinegar for 10 minutes.

  2. Drain it and mix with melted butter.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

Horseradish
Provides the sharp, pungent heat that defines the sauce.
Brown gravy
Supplies the liquid base and savoury depth for the sauce.
Prepared mustard
Adds sharpness and extra pungency that complements the horseradish.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and sharpens its flavour.
Melted butter (in the method)
Adds richness and a smoother, rounder mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Stewing the horseradish in vinegar. Horseradish's heat comes from compounds released when it is grated, and these fade with heat and time. Keeping the stew to the stated 10 minutes helps the sauce stay pungent, and draining it before adding butter keeps the sauce from becoming watery or greasy.

Swap the garlic

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (horseradish, mustard):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Dillfits better
  4. Garlicthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against horseradish, mustard. 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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