WASHINGTON — Jason Gold was in a tizzy. He was peeling a huge horseradish root, but it didn’t seem fresh, which led him to question whether it had been kept cold at the supermarket.
“Milk can be only a few days out of the cow and goes bad if it isn’t kept refrigerated,” he said. “Same with horseradish.”
He started peeling, grating and smelling, while his wife, Margi, covered her eyes to protect them from the fumes. He smiled and breathed a sigh of relief when he realized that the root was fine after all. “If it makes you cry, it is strong,” he said, with a satisfied smile.
His grandparents, Hyman and Tillie Gold, founded the company Gold’s, which grew into a national brand on the strength of its prepared horseradish, a condiment made by combining the root with vinegar and salt. Mr. Gold, 63, has been using Tillie’s recipe for it all his life.
“She would make it fresh in her apartment in Brooklyn using one of those old-fashioned hand grinders,” he said. “I remember crying because the horseradish would release its fumes. She would say, ‘It is nothing, nothing.’”
For Jews from Eastern and Central Europe, grated horseradish — with its pungent fragrance and heat, which come from oils called isothiocyanates that are released when the roots are crushed — is central to the Passover Seder plate, with its array of symbolic foods. On the first night of Passover, which falls on April 19 this year, the horseradish will be one of the first items tasted at the Seder, signifying the suffering of the Jews when they were enslaved in Egypt.
For many American Jews, a paneled-glass bottle of Gold’s is as familiar a sight at Passover as a bottle of Manischewitz wine. “My father would always bring home a perfectly formed big root for the Seder, with prepared horseradish hot off the production line to eat,” Mr. Gold said.
CreditKris Connor for The New York Times
Gold family legend traces the beginning of the business to 1932, during the Depression, after Hyman and Tillie Gold lost the shop where they sold and repaired radios. Hyman’s cousin, who was grinding horseradish on the street in Borough Park, Brooklyn, got into a fight and was sent to jail.
“When my grandfather bailed him out, he got the grinder,” said Mr. Gold, who is a bankruptcy lawyer here in Washington, and the only one of his parents’ three children not to go into the family business.
“In the beginning, my grandmother would grind up horseradish in her kitchen on Coney Island Avenue, and my grandfather would fill four-ounce bottles one by one and sell them off a pushcart to the stores,” he said. “Later on, my father and his two brothers would peddle them on bicycles to the stores, a few bottles or a case at a time.”
Soon, the business moved to a storefront below their apartment; it moved again in 1955, this time to a factory, when demand for prepared horseradish, both white and red (in which beets are added to the mixture), grew beyond Passover. Polish Catholics used the red variety for Easter; the plain white variety could be added to a Bloody Mary, served as an accompaniment to roast beef or used as a substitute for wasabi, as it was starting in the 1980s. In 2015, Mr. Gold’s brothers and cousins sold the company.
It may come as a surprise to some American Jews that horseradish was not part of the original Seder plate. In fact, chances are there was very little horseradish, if any, in the ancient Middle East.
“Jews in biblical times ate their roast lamb and matzo with maror, bitter herbs like endives and wild bitter lettuce,” said Dr. Susan Weingarten, the author of “Haroset: A Taste of Jewish History” (Toby Press, 2019).
In the 10th century, as Jews moved from the Mediterranean to colder regions like northern France and Germany, they switched from greens to horseradish, which has a large turnip-like root and leafy top that, in colder climates, peeks out of the ground in early April. (To this day, though, Jews of Sephardic and Middle Eastern descent all over the world use romaine, endives, chicory and other greens for their bitter herbs.)
When the Golds started selling horseradish, the roots came from Long Island farms and from backyards, where the plants often grew as weeds; they also bought large quantities from Poland when they couldn’t find them locally. Today, most of the roots come from southern Missouri, with some spillover in Illinois; they’re also grown in Northern California and Oregon.
Like oysters, according to the old saying, horseradish is best harvested in cooler months, those with names containing the letter “r.” (Both are said to be aphrodisiacs, too.)
Mr. Gold demonstrated how easy it is to make prepared horseradish at home. He peeled and grated a root, then added a little salt, equal amounts of white vinegar (which acts as a stabilizer) and very cold water.
At Seders, a small horseradish root is first shown on the plate, and then it is either peeled and cut into strips, or served prepared in a bowl. It is tasted alone with matzo, and then with haroseth, the paste with fruits and nuts that has a sweetness to complement the strong flavors, and that symbolizes the mortar the Jews used when they were enslaved. At dinner, prepared horseradish is the traditional condiment for gefilte fish; it could also be added to a sauce to serve with salmon.
And, at the Passover Seders held by Hyman and Tillie Gold’s descendants, someone always tells the story of how their grandparents had the foresight to know that people would rather buy horseradish as a grated condiment than go to the trouble to grind it themselves.
