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Sauce

Bayard or Piquant Sauce for Cold Meat, Fish, Etc.

A horseradish and mustard sauce with shallots, celery seed, cayenne pepper, and tarragon vinegar.

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 ↓

Bayard or Piquant Sauce for Cold Meat, Fish, Etc.

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Pound together the horseradish, salt, mustard, shallots, celery seed, and cayenne pepper.

  2. Gradually add the tarragon vinegar or burnet.

Rest and serve

  1. Let the mixture stand in a jar for one week.

  2. Strain the sauce through a sieve before serving.

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. Shallot + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together602 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Mustard + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together859 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Horseradish + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together376 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Mustard + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together901 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Scraped horseradish
Provides the sharp, pungent heat that defines the sauce.
Tarragon vinegar
Acts as the liquid base and adds acidity that sharpens the flavour.
Prepared mustard
Adds pungency and emulsifying body to the sauce.
Minced shallots
Contributes a mild onion-like aroma and savoury depth.

The step that matters

Let the mixture stand in a jar for one week. During the resting period the sharp compounds from horseradish, mustard and shallots mellow and blend into the vinegar. Rushing this step leaves the sauce harsher and less balanced.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Dillfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against horseradish, mustard, shallot, pepper, tarragon. 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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