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Horseradish Sauce
Fresh horseradish sauce is made as follows: one teaspoon of mustard; three tablespoons of cream; one tablespoon of vinegar; a little salt. Mix and grate as much horseradish into it as is required to make it rather thick.
A cold, uncooked sauce that comes together in about five minutes, provided the horseradish is fresh. The proportions here are a starting point rather than a formula, since the recipe deliberately leaves the quantity of root open.
- Fresh root is the whole pointPrepared horseradish from a jar is already packed in vinegar and will throw the acid balance off; if you use it, cut the vinegar to a teaspoon and taste before adding more. A peeled piece of fresh root a few inches long will grate to something in the region of half a cup, depending on how thick it is.
- Grate last, mix fastThe heat in horseradish comes from an enzyme reaction that starts when the cells are broken, and the volatile compound it produces dissipates fairly quickly on exposure to air. Acid arrests that reaction, so when the grated root meets the vinegared cream governs how hot the finished sauce is. Grate it early and leave it exposed and you get a duller, flatter, cabbage-like sauce.
- VentilateGrating fresh horseradish releases the same volatile compounds that make mustard gas your eyes water. Work near an open window or use a food processor with the lid kept on until the fumes settle.
- The mustardHere 'mustard' most likely means dry mustard powder rather than a prepared jarred mustard. Powder is considerably sharper spoon for spoon than a wet mustard such as Dijon, so a substitution will need appreciably more, added to taste.
- CreamHeavy cream works and can be lightly whipped first for a fluffier sauce; sour cream or creme fraiche is a common modern substitution and needs a little less vinegar.
- Yield and keepingAs written this makes only about a third of a cup, enough for four small servings alongside roast beef. It is best soon after making; it loses bite as it stands, noticeably so by the next day.
- Consistency"Rather thick" means it should mound on a spoon without running. Add the grated root a tablespoon at a time and stop when it holds its shape.
Horseradish with beef is generally traced to the seventeenth century, when the root moved from the apothecary's shelf to the table; John Gerard's herbal of 1597 already notes that Germans ate it as a sauce with fish while the English used it mainly as medicine. By the time the Butterick Publishing Company issued its cook book for the readers of its dressmaking patterns, the sauce had settled into two standard forms: this cold cream version for roast beef and cold meats, and a cooked version thickened with a white sauce. The uncooked one is the sharper of the two, and it is given here in brief, as little more than a set of proportions.