No. 478

Horseradish Sauces with Bread-Crumbs, Bechamel or Cream

Sauces au Raifort a la mie de Pain, Bechamel ou Creme

The horseradish needed for making sauces should be first scraped, then grated on a coarse grater. For plain horseradish, white sauce (No. 562), butter (No. 440) or Hollandaise sauces (No. 477) are used. The horseradish should never be cooked in the sauce, it must only be put in, in order to heat it.

Horseradish Sauce with Bread-crumbs.—Soak two ounces of bread-crumbs in hot water, then squeeze. Cook with broth in a saucepan for a few minutes, finishing with an ounce of butter, two spoonfuls of raw cream, salt, and a pinch of sugar. At the last moment add the grated horseradish to the sauce. This sauce is also frequently prepared with plain veloute (No. 415), lightly reduced and finished with three spoonfuls of raw cream. This sauce must be passed through a tammy (No. 159) and then the grated horseradish added.

Horseradish Sauce Bechamel, is made by pouring a pint of well seasoned bechamel into a saucepan; season with salt, cayenne, and sugar; take it off at the first boil, and add one gill of cream, and one ounce of fresh butter, also six ounces of grated horseradish; warm the sauce without boiling.

Horseradish and Cream.—Reduce a pint of cream to one-third, add to it salt, nutmeg, sugar and eight ounces of grated horseradish; warm it up and thicken with half a gill more of cream, two egg-yolks, and two ounces of butter.

← No. 477 Hollandaise Sauce and Hollandaise Mousseline Hot Sauces No. 479 Hugarian Sauce →

For the Modern Kitchen

Four variations on one idea, all of them turning on the same rule. Ranhofer gives quantities for a professional kitchen, so expect generous yields.

The hinge: never cook the horseradishHeat drives off the volatile oils that give grated horseradish its bite, and prolonged heating leaves a dull, cabbage-like flavor. Add it at the very end and bring the sauce only to serving temperature.
A gillHalf a cup. The bechamel version therefore takes 1 pint bechamel, 1/2 cup cream and 1 oz butter; the cream version finishes with 1/4 cup cream, two yolks and 2 oz butter.
"Spoonfuls"An unqualified "spoonful" here is generally read as a tablespoon, so take "two spoonfuls of raw cream" as roughly 2 tablespoons. It is a genuinely loose measure and the sauce is forgiving of it.
Raw creamCream used uncooked, stirred in off the boil; in 1894 it would in any case have been unpasteurized, pasteurization not yet being routine. Heavy cream stands in directly.
Fresh root onlySix to eight ounces of grated horseradish is a substantial root, peeled and taken on the coarse side of a box grater. Jarred prepared horseradish is packed in vinegar, which can curdle the cream and will skew the seasoning; if you use it, drain it hard and taste as you go.
TammyA fine worsted straining cloth, wrung between two people. A fine-mesh conical strainer or a doubled layer of cheesecloth does the same work, and only the sauce base is strained erward, never the horseradish.
The egg-yolk finishIn the cream version the yolks thicken a sauce already reduced by two-thirds, so it is close to a liaison. Temper them with a little hot cream, return the pan to low heat and hold it below a simmer, around 180F, stirring until it coats a spoon. It will break if it boils.
SeasoningThe pinch of sugar called for in most of these variants is not decoration; it rounds the sharpness of the root. Season, then taste after the horseradish goes in, since its heat mounts in the first minute or two.
Yield and serviceThe versions differ in size, the bechamel one, built on a full pint of sauce, being much the largest. Serve with boiled beef, brisket, roast beef or poached fish, and hold it in a warm bain-marie rather than over direct heat.

A Little History

Horseradish belongs to the northern European end of Ranhofer's repertoire: the grated root with boiled beef is standard in Germany, Austria and Poland, and the bread-crumb version here is essentially the Viennese Semmelkren, in which soaked rolls give body where a French kitchen would reach for a roux. Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York, characteristically files all of it under a French name and rebuilds each variant on a sauce base tera a veloute, a bechamel tera so that the same garnish can be dressed up or down according to the menu. That he offers four versions at all may suggest steady demand, though it is hard to say more than that. The insistence that the root never be cooked is worth noting as evidence of a careful palate, since the chemistry behind it tera the enzymatic reaction that produces the pungent isothiocyanates, and its destruction by heat tera was not something a working chef of the 1890s would have described in those terms.