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Horseradish as a Vegetable
Peel and grate horseradish and make a milk sauce as follows: Take a little butter and flour, put in pot and stir until yellow (not brown), add a little milk and boil. Add horseradish and just bring it to a boil.
— Mrs. J. H. Bagley
A church-supper cook's shorthand for what German kitchens call Meerrettichsoße — grated horseradish loosened in a white sauce. The receipt gives no quantities at all, so the ratios below are the standard ones for a thin béchamel.
- The hinge: barely heat the horseradishHorseradish owes its bite to volatile isothiocyanates released when the root is cut, and they cook off fast. "Just bring it to a boil" is the whole instruction — add it at the end, warm it through, and take it off the heat.
- Working quantitiesFor four servings: 2 tablespoons butter, 2 tablespoons flour, about 1 1/2 cups milk, and 1/3 to 1/2 cup freshly grated root. Season with salt and a spoonful of cider vinegar or lemon juice at the finish; a little cream or a pinch of sugar softens it if the root is fierce.
- "Stir until yellow (not brown)"This is a blond roux — two or three minutes over medium heat, just long enough to lose the raw-flour taste. Browning it would give a nutty color and flavor that fights the horseradish.
- Grating the rootFresh horseradish is far more irritating to the eyes than onion. Grate it at arm's length or pulse it in a food processor with the lid on and let it settle before opening. Peel only as much as you will use; the cut root loses its pungency fairly quickly once exposed.
- If you use the jarred kindPrepared horseradish is already acidulated with vinegar, so drain it well, use about half again as much by volume, and skip the added acid.
- ServingThis is a sauce for boiled beef brisket, tongue, corned beef, boiled fowl or poached fish, and it is thin on purpose — it should coat, not cling. Makes about 1 1/2 cups.
The title calls horseradish a vegetable, and the milk sauce is the classic Central European treatment served with boiled beef — Meerrettichsoße in German-speaking kitchens; chrain in the Jewish tradition to the east is a different thing, usually raw with vinegar and beet. The plant escaped cultivation early and grows semi-wild in parts of the Northeast, so a household of this period might well have dug a root from a garden edge rather than bought one. The vagueness of the measurements is typical of the community-cookbook form: contributors were writing for neighbors, and the only things this receipt bothers to specify are the color of the roux and the warning not to cook the horseradish.