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Horseradish Sauce
1/2 cup milk. 1 tablespoon cracker crumbs Salt to taste 1 tablespoon butter 1 tablespoon horseradish Heat the milk with the cracker crumbs in a double boiler; add the other ingredients; boil several minutes and serve with boiled beef.
A short white sauce thickened with cracker crumbs rather than flour. Two things need attention: the milk quantity is missing from the ingredient list, and the heat treatment works against the horseradish.
- The missing milkThe instructions call for milk but the ingredient list omits the amount. Nothing in the original settles it, so judge by eye; with only a tablespoon of crumbs and a tablespoon of butter the sauce will be light-bodied at any generous quantity of milk.
- Add the horseradish off the heatThe pungency of horseradish comes from volatile isothiocyanates released when the root is grated, and they cook off quickly. Boiling the finished sauce "several minutes" as written leaves a mild, faintly cabbagey milk sauce. Thicken the milk first, then stir the horseradish in at the end with the pan off the burner.
- Cracker crumbs as thickenerPeriod soda or water crackers were drier and blander than most modern crackers. Use unsalted saltines or plain water biscuits crushed fine, and hold back on salt until the sauce has thickened, since crackers carry their own.
- "1 tablespoon horseradish"In this period that generally means the freshly grated root, or bottled horseradish grated in vinegar. A tablespoon of fresh root is considerably sharper than a tablespoon of the creamed product sold today; taste and add more if using prepared.
- Double boilerThe double boiler is there to keep milk from scorching, which is worth doing with so little starch to protect it. A heavy saucepan over low heat works if you stir steadily, though the sauce will thicken faster.
- Time and textureCracker crumbs swell and soften rather than thicken as a flour roux does, so expect a slightly grainy body; the original's 'several minutes' over the water bath is the only guide given. Whisking briskly at the end smooths it out.
- YieldCannot be fixed, since the quantity of milk is missing from the original. The proportions are forgiving if scaled.
Horseradish with boiled beef is often said to be among the oldest fixed pairings in northern European cooking: the root, Armoracia rusticana, was long treated more as a medicine and condiment than a vegetable, and it appears with beef in English and German kitchens alike, the latter as Kren. In the version here the raw grated root is softened into a hot milk sauce rather than served neat in vinegar or whipped cream. Thickening that sauce with cracker crumbs instead of flour was common in turn-of-the-century American household cookery, where crackers were a pantry staple and stood in for breadcrumbs, roux and binding in everything from sauces to croquettes.