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Horseradish Dressing

A cold dressing made with grated horseradish, vinegar, mustard, sugar, salt, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Horseradish Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Mix the horseradish and vinegar in a bowl and let it stand for 15 minutes.

  2. In another bowl, mix the sugar, mustard, and salt together.

  3. Add the sugar mixture to the horseradish and vinegar, then stir in the cream.

Serve

  1. Serve very cold.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Horseradish + vinegartop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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 dressing.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sharpness and balances the richness of the cream.
Cream
Adds fat and body, softening the bite of the horseradish.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that rounds out the sharpness of the horseradish and mustard.
Dry mustard
Adds a further layer of sharp pungency.

The step that matters

Let the horseradish stand in the vinegar. The acid in the vinegar begins to tame the raw bite of the freshly grated horseradish, so letting it rest for the full 15 minutes gives a smoother, more balanced flavour before the other ingredients are added.

“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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