INGREDIENT NOTES
Tasting Prepared Horseradish
Horseradish gives cocktail sauce and Bloody Marys their trademark zip and is a must-have at both Easter buffets and Passover seders, but which brand is best? We purchased eight, including both refrigerated and shelf-stable products, priced from about $0.19 to about $0.60 per ounce. The refrigerated products generally contained only horseradish, vinegar, and salt, while the shelf-stable products all contained additional ingredients such as oil, sweeteners, and preservatives. We sampled them in blind tastings of horseradish sauce and horseradish mashed potatoes.
When horseradish is grated, a chemical reaction takes place that creates irritating molecules called isothiocyanates. As food science expert Harold McGee explains in On Food and Cooking (2004), those molecules, which are lighter in weight than those of other spicy foods, travel into our nasal passages and stimulate nerve endings there. That’s why we feel the burn of horseradish in our noses but the spice of hot chile peppers or black peppercorns mainly just makes our mouths and lips tingle.
We liked “fiery” samples with nosetingling heat. The milder products tasted “tangy” and made for “pickle-y” mashed potatoes. The likely source of the isothiocyanates have formed slows the breakdown of those irritating molecules and keeps a horseradish hot.
