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French Mustard

A mustard condiment made with herbs, spices, vinegar, mustard flour, olive oil, and sugar, macerated for 15 days.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Chervil and tarragon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 824 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

French Mustard

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the infusion

  1. Combine parsley, chervil, chives, celery, and tarragon in a bowl.

  2. Add ground cloves, garlic, thyme, and coarse sea salt; mix well.

  3. Macerate the mixture in white wine vinegar, stirring twice daily for 15 days.

  4. Strain the mixture through a coarse cloth.

Make the mustard

  1. In a separate bowl, mix mustard flour with olive oil, gradually adding the strained vinegar.

  2. Mix until smooth, then add sugar to achieve a slightly sweet taste.

  3. Pour the mustard into terrines or earthen pots and seal tightly.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Chervil + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together824 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Chervil + chivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together370 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Tarragon + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together528 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Parsley + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Mustard flour
Provides the sharp pungency and the body that thickens the mustard into a paste.
White wine vinegar
Supplies acidity that lifts the flavour and softens the sharpness of the mustard.
Olive oil
Adds fat that makes the mustard smooth and rounds its texture.
Tarragon
Contributes aromatic herbal flavour to the infused vinegar.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the sharpness of the mustard and vinegar.

The step that matters

Straining and mixing the vinegar into the mustard flour. Mustard flour's pungency develops when it meets liquid, and adding the vinegar gradually while mixing keeps the paste smooth instead of lumpy. Sugar is added last so the final sweetness can be judged after the sharpness has settled.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, chervil, chive, celery, tarragon, garlic, thyme):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Fennelfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, chervil, chive, celery, tarragon, garlic, thyme. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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