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Sauces for Roast Beef or Mutton

A creamy horseradish sauce with mustard and vinegar, suitable for roast beef or mutton.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and horseradish 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 ↓

Sauces for Roast Beef or Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Grate horseradish into a bowl.

  2. Add cream, mustard, and salt; mix well.

  3. Stir in cold vinegar and mix thoroughly.

  4. Serve in a small 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.

  1. Mustard + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Vinegar + horseradishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Cream + horseradishtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together483 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  5. Cream + vinegartop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,064 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, mellow body that softens the sharpness.
Mustard
Adds sharp, savoury flavour and helps the sauce hold together smoothly.
Horseradish
Supplies the pungent heat and aroma that give the sauce its character.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps set horseradish's bite.

The step that matters

Stirring in the cold vinegar. Acid slows the chemical reactions that drive horseradish's sharp heat, so the vinegar helps fix the bite. Mix it in thoroughly so the heat stays even throughout the sauce.

“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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