Skip to main content
Main

Cream Horseradish Sauce

A creamy sauce made with butter, flour, stock, milk, sweet cream, and grated horseradish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Cream Horseradish Sauce

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Cream Horseradish Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, melt 2 tablespoons of butter and stir in 2 tablespoons of flour and ½ teaspoon of coarse sea salt.

  2. Gradually add ½ cup of white stock and ½ cup of milk, stirring until thickened.

  3. Remove from heat and stir in 1 tablespoon of butter, ¼ cup of sweet cream, and ⅓ cup of grated horseradish.

  4. Heat gently without boiling.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Flour + horseradishtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together743 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the butter and stock mixture into a smooth, sauce-like base.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour, and forms the base for the flour roux.
White stock
Supplies the liquid that the roux thickens into the sauce.
Milk
Adds body and mild sweetness to the sauce.
Sweet cream
Adds fat and a smoother, richer texture to the finished sauce.
Grated horseradish
Provides the sharp, pungent heat that defines the sauce.

The step that matters

Heat gently without boiling. Boiling can cause a cream-based sauce to separate or turn grainy, and the horseradish's pungent flavour fades with prolonged heat, so gentle warming keeps the sauce smooth and flavourful.

Swap the horseradish

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, milk, cream):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Horseradishthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, milk, cream. 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.

You might also like

Horseradish SauceHorseradish Sauce17 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes