Name: Horseradish Sauce
Ingredients: ½ cup grated horseradish; ¼ cup sweet cream; 1 teaspoon mustard; ¼ teaspoon salt; ½ cup tarragon vinegar

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 ↓

Horseradish Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

In a bowl, combine the grated horseradish and sweet cream.
Season with mustard and salt, then mix well.
Add the tarragon vinegar and stir until fully combined.

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 + tarragontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together901 recipes

Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).
Horseradish + tarragontop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together73 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Tarragon + vinegartop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,547 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together14,067 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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.
Sweet cream: Adds fat and body, softening the bite of the horseradish.
Tarragon vinegar: Adds acidity and a light herbal note that brightens the sauce.

Swap the tarragon

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

Capersfits about as well
Tarragonthe original
Dillfits less well
Celeryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against horseradish, cream, mustard, vinegar. 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.