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Some Kitchen Kinks: Horse
A Horse Radish.-Horse radish, like mustard, is more often served with meat than used to flavor it during cooking. very palatable sauce, especially good with boiled beef, is made by adding grated horse radish and a little vinegar to a little whipped cream, or as follows: Thicken milk with cracker crumbs by heating them together in a double boiler, using 3 tablespoonsful of cracker crumbs to 1½ cups of milk. Add one-third of a cup of grated horse radish, 3 tablespoonsful of butter, and one-half teaspoonful of salt; or thicken with butter and flour some of the water in which the meat was boiled, add a generous quantity (1 or 2 tablespoonsful) of grated horse radish, boil a short time, and serve. This recipe is the most usual in German homes where the sauce is a favorite. a Acid Flavoring. - Vinegar, lemon juice, and sour jelly, like currant, are often used to flavor the thick gravies which are a part of meat stew or which are served with it. Vinegar is an old-fashioned relish which was often added to bacon or salt pork and greens, pork and beans, corned beef and cabbage, and similar dishes.
These flavors combine well with that of brown flour, but not with onions or other vegetables of strong flavor.
The idea that vinegar used in small quantities is unwholesome seems to be without foundation.
Three sauces in one paragraph: a cold cream version, a milk-and-cracker-crumb version, and a thickened version built on the beef broth. All three depend on the same thing, which is keeping the heat off the horseradish.
- The hinge: heat destroys itHorseradish's bite comes from volatile compounds released when the root is cut or grated, and they cook off quickly. Stir the grated root in at the end, off the heat or barely simmering, and taste before serving; the "boil a short time" in the third variant should be a minute at most, and only to cook the flour.
- "11½ cups of milk" is a misprintThree tablespoons of cracker crumbs will thicken about 1½ cups of milk, which is almost certainly what was meant. The other quantities given — a third of a cup of horseradish, 3 tablespoons butter, half a teaspoon salt — fit that scale.
- Cracker crumbs as thickenerSoda crackers of this period may well have been drier and less salty than modern saltines. Use unsalted or lightly salted crackers ground fine, hold back the salt until the sauce has thickened, and give it long enough in the double boiler for the crumbs to swell and stop tasting of cracker.
- Fresh root, and what it does to a kitchenA fresh horseradish root is peeled and grated; the fumes are genuinely sharp and worse in a food processor, which concentrates them in the bowl. Grate in a ventilated spot and add a spoonful of vinegar to the grated root at once, which fixes the heat at the level it has reached.
- Using jarred prepared horseradishPrepared horseradish already contains vinegar and salt, so drain it and reduce or omit the added vinegar. It is usually milder than freshly grated root, so expect to need rather more, adjusting to taste.
- The cream versionWhip cold heavy cream to soft peaks, then fold in the horseradish and vinegar; sugar has no place in it. It is a cold sauce, served alongside hot boiled beef, and it will weep if held more than an hour or two.
- The broth versionMelt about 2 tablespoons butter, stir in 2 tablespoons flour, cook a minute without colouring, then whisk in a cup of the strained beef cooking liquid. Skim the fat off the broth first or the sauce will break greasy.
- YieldThe recipe states no yield. The milk-and-crumb version comes to something like two cups, enough for four to six as an accompaniment to boiled beef or brisket; the cream and broth versions are left entirely to the cook's judgement.
Grated horseradish with boiled beef is a long-established pairing in northern European cooking, and the recipe's nod to "German homes" points at the Austro-German tradition of Kren — served with Tafelspitz either loosened with cream (Sahnekren) or bound with grated apple or with soaked bread and stock (Semmelkren), which is essentially what the cracker-crumb version here is doing with American pantry goods. The root itself is a mustard-family plant whose pungency, like mustard's, is created rather than released: the sharp compounds form only when the cells are broken, which is why old cookbooks insist on grating it at the last moment and why vinegar is added immediately to hold the heat in place. The closing note on vinegar belongs to a period preoccupation: whether acids "injured digestion" was a live question in domestic writing of the time, and the author settles it with a single flat dismissal.