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Horsekadish Sauce
Grate one teacupful horseradish. 1 tablespoonful ground mustard. 1 tablespoonful sugar. 4 tablespoonfuls vinegar, or olive oil if preferred. Pepper and salt. 1 teaspoonful turmeric.--Mrs. J. H. T. Celery sauce is good made in the same way, by adding butter instead of oil, and celery instead of horseradish.--Mrs. P. W.
MUSHROOM SAUCE, FOR FRIED OR BROILED FISH.
Get fine-grown fresh gathered mushrooms; break them up and sprinkle salt over them. Let them lie for the juice to run out, stirring them often. When the juice has been extracted, strain it, boil well with a little ginger and pepper.
Do not season much, as it is the mushroom flavor to be desired. You can add seasoning as required; all necessary to keep it is enough salt and pepper. This makes a nice flavoring for any sauce or gravy mixed with soy or lemon pickle.--Mrs. C. C.
Two sauces run together on one page. The horseradish (and its celery variant) is a straightforward cold table sauce; the mushroom essence that follows is a home-preserved low-acid liquid and is the reason for the caution above.
- Why the mushroom sauce failsIt directs you to strain raw mushroom juice, boil it with a little ginger and pepper, and keep it on nothing but salt and pepper. That is an unsealed, unacidified, low-acid preserve held at room temperature, which is the classic setting for Clostridium botulinum; no quantity of salt is specified. Use a current recipe for mushroom ketchup or essence if you want one, with measured acid and refrigeration.
- "Fresh gathered" mushroomsThe instruction assumes a cook who forages from known ground. Wild mushroom identification is not something a recipe can substitute for, and several dangerous species resemble edible field mushrooms closely.
- TeacupfulA teacup is generally reckoned at about 3/4 cup rather than a full measuring cup. Even so that is a great deal of grated horseradish, and it is fiercely pungent when freshly grated.
- Grating horseradishThe volatile oils released are strong enough to sting the eyes badly. Work near an open window or in a food processor with the lid left on for a minute after pulsing, and peel the root only just before grating, as the cut surface browns and loses heat quickly.
- Vinegar or oilThe two produce different sauces. Vinegar gives a sharp relish that will keep some days refrigerated; olive oil gives a thicker, milder paste that mutes the heat. Vinegar also fixes the pungency, which otherwise fades soon after grating.
- TurmericProbably here for colour as much as flavour, as in prepared mustards; a teaspoon in this quantity will be noticeably earthy, and a quarter teaspoon will yellow the sauce.
- The celery variantMrs. P. W.'s version swaps butter for oil and celery for horseradish, made otherwise 'in the same way'. Butter suggests it may have been intended warm rather than as a cold relish, though the text does not say so. Celery contributes little pungency of its own; expect a mild, mustard-forward sauce.
- YieldThe horseradish sauce makes roughly a cup, enough for a good many servings alongside boiled beef, ham or cold roast.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1879), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree, is a collective book: nearly every receipt carries the initials of the Virginia housewife who supplied it, which is why one page can hold two unrelated sauces from two different contributors. Grated horseradish with mustard and vinegar is the older English style of the sauce, predating the cream-based version now usual, and it kept well: a jar of it sharpened salt beef, boiled ham and cold roast through the winter. The mushroom preparation belongs to a different and once-enormous family of home-made flavourings mushroom ketchup, walnut ketchup, lemon pickle, soy that supplied the savoury depth commercial bottled sauces and bouillon cubes later took over. The instruction to season lightly "as it is the mushroom flavor to be desired" is a reminder that these essences were the period's umami cupboard, made in quantity when field mushrooms were plentiful.