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HORSE-RADISH SAUCE, HOT (for Boiled Fowls, etc.)
Prepare the horse-radish as before. Grate an ounce very finely, add a pinch of salt, and pour over it half a pint of good cream. Mix thoroughly, put into a jar, and place it in a saucepan of boiling water. When quite hot, serve in a boat. Time, half an hour to prepare. Probable cost, 10d. Sufficient for five or six persons.
A simple warmed cream sauce whose whole success rests on never letting the cream near direct heat. The jar-in-a-saucepan method is a bain-marie, and it is not optional.
- QuantitiesHalf a pint in an English book of this date is 10 fl oz, or about 1 1/4 US cups. One ounce of grated horseradish is roughly 3 tablespoons packed — assertive but not fierce.
- Gentle heat is the hingeCream held over direct flame will thin, separate or catch. Set a heatproof jar or bowl in a pan of barely simmering water, as the recipe directs, and heat only until steaming.
- "Prepare as before"The cross-reference points back to an earlier horseradish entry, which would have covered cleaning, peeling and finely grating the root. Grate close to serving time; the volatile heat and pungency fade quite quickly.
- Fresh root vs. jarredBottled horseradish is packed in vinegar, and that added acid makes curdling in warm cream more likely. If you use it, drain it well and expect a sharper, more acid result.
- Cream to use"Good cream" in a book of this date implies a rich cream, closer to modern double or heavy cream than to single cream; a richer cream will also stand gentle warming better.
- ThicknessThis is a thin, pouring sauce, not a bound one. If you want body, fold in a spoonful of lightly whipped cream off the heat rather than adding flour.
- Yield and servingFive or six portions as written, alongside boiled chicken, boiled beef or poached fish. Serve at once in a warmed boat; it does not hold or reheat well.
- SeasoningOnly salt is specified. A little white pepper, and if you like a few drops of lemon or white wine vinegar stirred in off the heat, will lift it — add any acid at the last moment and sparingly, or the warm cream may split.
Horseradish reached the English table as a condiment for boiled and roast meats by the seventeenth century, and Cassell's, compiled in the 1870s and reissued for decades after, treats it as a standard household root, grated at need rather than bought ready-made. The cold vinegar-and-cream version was the everyday accompaniment to roast beef; this hot one belongs to the older tradition of white sauces for boiled fowl, where a plainly poached bird was expected to arrive with something sharp beside it. The "probable cost, 10d." is characteristic of the book, which attached a price to nearly every dish. A jar set in boiling water seems to have served as a domestic bain-marie where a purpose-made double boiler was not to hand.