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Horseradish Sauce
Place in a small saucepan an ounce butter with an ounce flour, briskly stir with a wooden spoon while heating for one minute, then pour in two gills hot milk, season with half a teaspoon salt, mix well and let boil for ten minutes. Add three tablespoonfuls freshly grated horseradish, mix well, boil for one minute, then use as required.
A plain béchamel finished with grated horseradish. The only technical points are the old liquid measure and the fact that horseradish loses its heat the moment it meets heat.
- Two gillsA gill is half a cup, so two gills is one cup (240 ml) of milk. With an ounce each of butter and flour that gives a fairly thick coating sauce; loosen with a little more hot milk if you want it pourable.
- Ounce of flourAn ounce of flour is about 3 1/2 level tablespoons, not one ounce by volume. An ounce of butter is 2 tablespoons. Weighing both is quicker than guessing.
- Cook the roux properlyOne minute of brisk stirring over moderate heat is enough to lose the raw taste without colouring it. This is a white sauce; if it turns blond the horseradish flavour muddies.
- The ten-minute boilTen minutes at a bare simmer, stirred, is what makes the difference between a floury sauce and a smooth one. Keep the heat low and stir the corners of the pan, or the milk solids will catch.
- Add the horseradish last, and brieflyThis is the hinge. The pungency of horseradish comes from volatile compounds released by grating, and they cook off fast. The one-minute boil in the original is already the outer limit; folding it in off the heat gives a sharper sauce.
- Freshly gratedA knob of fresh root, peeled and grated fine on a microplane, is what is meant. Bottled prepared horseradish is packed in vinegar and will thin and sour the sauce, so drain it well and use rather more; creamed horseradish is not a substitute here.
- SeasoningHalf a teaspoon of salt for a cup of sauce is right for something served alongside boiled beef. A grating of nutmeg, a spoonful of cream, or a few drops of vinegar or lemon at the end are all traditional finishes and none of them will hurt it.
- YieldAbout one cup, enough for four to six as an accompaniment to boiled or roast beef, tongue, or poached fish. It thickens as it cools and reheats gently with a splash of milk, though the horseradish bite will be duller the second time.
Horseradish belongs to the same family as mustard and cabbage, and like them it carries no heat until the root is cut or grated, when its cells release the compounds that make the eyes water. Northern and Central European cooking has used it as the sharp counterpoint to plain boiled meat for centuries; the English pair it with roast beef, the Germans and Austrians with boiled beef, sometimes bound with cream, sometimes with grated apple or with soaked breadcrumbs instead of a flour roux. What this version shows is the reach of the French sauce system in the professional kitchens of the early twentieth century: a Central European condiment reworked as a b ipped sauce with a flavouring stirred in at the end, which is exactly how a book called The International Cook Book would file it.