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Horse-Radish Sauce (Grate very fine a stick)
Grate very fine a stick of horse-radish; with two tablespoons of it mix a teaspoonful of salt and four tablespoons of cream; stir briskly and add by degrees a wineglass of vinegar.
A cold, uncooked sauce of the plainest kind — the only real variables are the freshness of the root and how much vinegar you let in. It comes together in five minutes.
- A wineglassIn nineteenth-century American cookbooks a wineglass is reckoned at about 2 fl oz, or 1/4 cup. That is a lot of vinegar against four tablespoons of cream, which is why the recipe says to add it by degrees: stop when the sauce tastes sharp rather than thin.
- A stick of horse-radishA length of peeled root. You need very little for two tablespoons of gratings; a 3-inch piece of a thick root is plenty. Grate only what you need and wrap the rest.
- Grate it lastHorseradish's heat comes from compounds released when the cells are broken, and they begin to fade within minutes of grating. Grate immediately before mixing, and add the vinegar promptly: acid arrests the reaction and locks in the pungency at whatever level it has reached.
- FumesFreshly grated horseradish releases volatile isothiocyanates that hit the eyes and sinuses hard, more so than onion. Grate at arm's length, or use a food processor and let the lid sit a moment before opening.
- The creamOrdinary heavy or whipping cream, unwhipped. Vinegar added too fast can curdle it; trickling it in while stirring briskly, as directed, keeps it smooth.
- Prepared horseradish as a substituteBottled horseradish is already packed in vinegar. If you use it, drain it, count on it being milder than fresh, and cut the added vinegar to a tablespoon or two, tasting as you go.
- Yield and servingMakes something over half a cup -- enough for four to six as an accompaniment to cold or hot roast beef, boiled tongue, or smoked fish. Serve cold; it does not want heating.
- KeepingBest the day it is made. The cream limits it to two or three days refrigerated, and the heat will have gone flat well before the cream does.
Horseradish with beef is an English habit of long standing — the root was grown in kitchen gardens as a physic plant before it settled into the sauce boat, and by the eighteenth century a grated-root-and-vinegar sauce was standard with roast and boiled meats. The cream version here is the softer, dressier form, closer to what German and Austrian cooks call Sahnemeerrettich. Note that nothing is cooked and nothing is measured by weight: this is a sauce a household made in the few minutes between carving and sitting down.