Spice Up Your Holidays With This Tempting Sauce That Shares Our Name

It came upon a midnight clear: I was using Google to search for an old Jezebel story about Texas’ anti-abortion Attorney General Ken Paxton when the search engine decided instead to suggest a recipe for something called “Jezebel sauce.”

My interest was immediately piqued. I love sauces, I love condiments, and I love distractions from Paxton’s repeated assaults on democracy. It also intrigued the corner of my brain that aspires to be a food writer (fun fact: In 2021, I wrote a 14,000-word masters dissertation on the intersection between coffee and nationalism), and ‘tis the season for some adventurous, Christmas-coded recipes, so why not somersault down the rabbit hole of a festive sauce named after our namesake?

Before I went shopping, I did a few more quick Google searches. Jezebel sauce began appearing in cookbooks in the South in the 1950s—a time when aspic abominations terrorized dinner tables; canned anything was king; and housewives relied on instant ingredients. And like most dishes born in the South, it’s a slightly cursed concoction, with most recipes listing four core components: apple jam; pineapple preserves; prepared horseradish; and dry mustard. The origins are contested, with Florida, Louisiana, and Mississippi all laying claim to it, and everyone’s mom having the “best” recipe.

Jezebel sauce also appears to be a year-round treat for Dixie kitchens, where it’s typically spooned on top of cream cheese, served on ham, or as a crucial topping on a Triscuit hors d’oeuvres. Garden & Gun calls it a “staple of community cookbooks and grandmothers’ tables”; Food52 says it’s a party favorite; and Southern Living says it’s a “zingy addition” in any situation where you’re using preserves. But, since it’s December 22, we’re calling it a holiday special.

So, with my list of four ingredients in hand, off to Whole Foods I went on the Sunday before Christmas at 4 p.m. Alas, I had to move quickly and ended up opting for some quirky substitutes that some Jezebel sauce purists may crucify me for.

 

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Off the bat, the closest thing I could find to apple jam was a cinnamon apple jelly from Stonewall Kitchen—which sounded as good a festive twist as any, so into the basket it went. The pineapple preserves were also nowhere to be seen, so I decided to settle for a can of pineapple chunks instead. (I got the last one, and I’m dearly sorry to whoever needed it for their Christmas ham.)

I also could not find prepared horseradish, nor a horseradish plant, nor even horseradish proper. (Looking back, it’s because horseradish isn’t actually stored with condiments like mayonnaise or ketchup; rather, it’s in the refrigerated section, next to the vegetables. Oops.) But it’s OK, because I got a combination of mustard and horseradish in one jar, from Tracklements, a British brand that I happen to love. And I had a tin of dry Colman’s mustard already on hand, so I used that for a double-mustard punch.

To make Jezebel sauce, I began by chopping up the pineapple chunks with some food-safe scissors. Then I added the cinnamon apple jelly, and dolloped in a heavy hand of the mustard-horseradish mix, before heaping on a small mountain of mustard powder. While mixing, I began to grow skeptical. The dry mustard was making things look particularly unappetizing, and I had to consistently tease out little powder pockets to ensure a smoother consistency. I imagined the sauce would taste sickly at worst, edible at best—or just turn into the kind of thing you leave in a jar in the refrigerator to exist until the end of time. Nevertheless, I persisted. And, fortunately, I was very wrong.

Jezebel sauce is fucking delicious! I don’t know if it’s because I strayed too far from the suggested ingredients, but it was mostly sweet, kind of spicy, and had a good amount of heat. (Like, eating-it-too-fast-will-give-you-heartburn kind of heat.) I tried it on some cream cheese and crackers—the most common way to enjoy Jezebel sauce—before slathering it on anything else in sight. I basted it on a soft-boiled egg (yum); a slice of salami (great); some toast (just OK); and used it to make some thick cold sandwiches with sliced cheese and turkey.

Then, in a moment of cursed inspiration, I added it to some sparkling water. I’m not a huge fan of mixing sparkling water with jam (I blame TikTok for falling victim to this food trend), but I love a good horseradish vodka—so why not? And it was…pretty good. If I weren’t experimenting at 10 a.m. I might have even tried making it into a Horseradish Mule.

So it was festive, it was easy to make, it was tasty—but there was still one question left: Why was this sauce so Jezebel-y? Most places seem to agree that there’s a biblical reference at hand here—but how come? And if it was named after her because she was a harlot of sorts, how come it wasn’t named after another scripture vixen, like Delilah, or Bathsheba? Was it as sloppy a naming process as a slutty brownie? Assuming the proof was in the pudding (or the sauce), I briefly confronted my dad—a scholar and expert in the Old Testament. “Jezebel represents intoxication with power,” he said, comparing the Phoenician princess’s “gripping power” to the hot tang of mustard. “Just like power is attractive, so is spicy sauce.”

Sounds good to me! What better flavor profile to ascribe to Jezebel (us) than sweet, fun, and spicy? So if anyone out there is struggling with what to bring to the Christmas potluck at the last minute, I guarantee you this is as good a contribution as any. Here are a few bits of inspiration—from me to you—on what to put it on.

• Your cheeseboard. Obviously.
• Any kind of plain, slightly sweet ball of meat. This can be a literal meatball, a cocktail sausage, or like, a lamb kofta. Go crazy.
• Brussel sprouts. Halve them, toss them in some Jezebel sauce, and roast them until they get really crispy.
• The Beef, Nut, or Salmon Wellington that seems to relentlessly plague us during the holidays.
• And, of course, in a horseradish mule. I’d recommend shaking a few globs of the stuff with some ice, vodka, and lime, before pouring it into a glass and topping everything off with some ginger beer. Bonus points if you rim the sides with a mix of dry ginger and mustard.

From all of us here at Jezebel, happy saucing!

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