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Horse-Radish for Garnish
Wash and scrub the horse-radish thoroughly. Let it lie for an hour in cold water; then scrape it very finely with a sharp knife. Arrange it in little bunches round the dish, or, if there is gravy with the meat, put it in a small glass dish near the carver. Probable cost, 2d. per root.
A preparation rather than a dish, and the technique is the whole point: shredded raw horseradish shaved thin enough to curl, set beside roast beef. A few notes on sourcing and handling.
- "Scrape it very finely"This is not grating. Held flat against the root with a sharp knife or a swivel peeler, you take off long thin ribbons that curl into loose bunches. Grated horseradish collapses into a wet mound and will not garnish anything.
- The hour in cold waterThe recipe does not say why, but it plumps and firms the root, which helps the shavings curl instead of tearing. Worth doing with a root that has spent a week in the refrigerator, which will be limp and woody at the core.
- Pungency is a timerThe heat in horseradish comes from an enzyme reaction that begins when the cells are cut, peaks in a few minutes, and fades. Shave it within half an hour of serving; a bunch prepared in the morning will taste of not much by dinner.
- VentilationThe same volatiles that go up the nose go into the eyes. Work near an open window or an extractor fan rather than bent over the board.
- Buying the rootLook for a firm root with no soft ends, roughly 8-10 in long and 1-2 in thick. Discard any greenish or hollow centre and the fibrous tail. One root of that size garnishes a large joint.
- Bottled horseradish will not do thisJarred grated horseradish is packed in vinegar and will neither curl nor sit up in bunches. If you cannot get the fresh root, use a small dish of horseradish cream and abandon the garnish.
- "2d. per root"Twopence, in pre-decimal British currency. Cassell's habit of costing every entry is a reminder that these books were written for households keeping accounts, not for browsing.
Horseradish with roast beef is one of the oldest surviving English condiment pairings, often said to go back to the seventeenth century, though the root appears as a sauce for meat and fish in English herbal literature from the late sixteenth century, where it is described, in a characterisation that belongs to that herbal tradition rather than to documented usage, as a plant used chiefly by Germans and by the poor. By the time Cassell's was compiled at the end of the nineteenth century the association was so fixed that a Sunday joint without it looked unfinished, and the ribbon-shaved garnish had become part of the visual grammar of the carving dish, in an era when the joint was carved at table and the dish itself had to look composed under the eye of every guest.