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To Make French Mustard

A mustard condiment made by soaking mustard seeds in vinegar, grinding with spices, and adding burnt flour or starch.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

To Make French Mustard

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the mustard seed in vinegar overnight.

  2. Grind the soaked mustard seed until smooth.

Make the mustard

  1. Add burnt flour or starch and ground spices to the mixture.

  2. Regrind the mixture several times until it has a jelly-like texture.

  3. Cool the mixture and then bottle it.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Mustard + allspicetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Ground mustard seed
Provides the main pungent flavour and the bulk of the paste.
Vinegar
Softens the seed on soaking and gives the mustard its sharp acidity.
Burnt flour or starch
Thickens the mixture so it sets to a smooth, jelly-like texture.

The step that matters

Regrind until jelly-like. Repeated grinding breaks down the seed particles so the paste becomes smooth and thick. Stopping early leaves it grainy and loose, and it may not set properly as it cools.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, vinegar, clove, allspice, pepper):

  1. Mustardthe original
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Horseradishfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, vinegar, clove, allspice, pepper. 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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