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Horseradish Sauce (to serve with Roast Beef)
INGREDIENTS for sufficient for a joint.-4 tablespoonfuls of grated horseradish, 1 teaspoonful of pounded sugar, 1 teaspoonful of salt, ½ teaspoonful of pepper, 2 teaspoonfuls of made mustard; vinegar.
AVERAGE COST, 3d.
Grate the horseradish, and mix it well with the sugar, salt, pepper and mustard; moisten it with sufficient vinegar to give it the consistency of cream, and serve in a tureen; 3 or 4 tablespoonfuls of cream added to the above very much improve the appearance and flavour of this THE HORSERADISH. sauce. To heat it to serve with hot roast beef, put in a bain marie or a jar, which place in a saucepan of boiling water; make it hot, but do not allow it to boil, or it will curdle.
Note. This sauce is a great improvement on the old-fashioned way of serving cold-scraped horseradish with hot roast beef. The mixing of spoils everything on the plate. the cold.vinegar with the warm gravy cools and
A cold-mixed horseradish sauce that can also be gently warmed. The whole thing takes five minutes once the root is grated, and the only real hazard is heat.
- Never let it boilIf cream is added and the sauce is warmed, keep it below a simmer in a bain-marie or a jar standing in hot water. Direct heat, or a boil, will split the cream and turn the sauce grainy.
- Fresh root only"Grated horseradish" means the fresh root, peeled and grated fine on a rasp or in a food processor. Bottled prepared horseradish is already acidulated and salted, so if you substitute it, drain it and cut the vinegar and salt back sharply.
- Grate in ventilated airThe volatile oils released by grating are far harsher than onion and go straight for the eyes and sinuses. Grate near an open window, and if using a processor let the fumes settle before lifting the lid.
- Pounded sugarThis is simply caster or superfine sugar; granulated dissolves adequately in the vinegar.
- Made mustardMustard already mixed to a paste, not dry powder. An English mustard is closest to what was meant; Dijon will read softer.
- VinegarMalt or white wine vinegar. Add it a teaspoon at a time until the mixture just falls from the spoon like thick cream, since the water content of the root varies a good deal.
- The creamThree or four tablespoonfuls of double or heavy cream, folded in at the end. Lightly whipped cream gives a paler, thicker sauce that holds better on the plate.
- Yield and keepingRoughly half a cup. The book says only "sufficient for a joint" and names no number of diners. Without cream the vinegar mixture will keep a few days covered in the refrigerator; once cream is added, use it the same day.
Horseradish was a common English accompaniment to roast beef by the eighteenth century, served simply scraped into shreds and heaped beside the meat -- the "old-fashioned way" the note itself disparages. The note appended here argues a small point of dining-room practice rather than cookery: cold shredded root and cold vinegar chill the hot gravy on the plate, so the sauce is better bound, thinned to a cream and warmed in a water bath before it goes to table in its own tureen. The "AVERAGE COST, 3d." line follows the costing format of the Beeton household books; horseradish was cheap, and the root is notoriously hard to eradicate once established, though the recipe says nothing about where the cook got it.