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To Make French Mustard

A mustard condiment made by soaking mustard seeds in vinegar, grinding with spices, and cooling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 the seed

  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, spices, and any optional flavoring.

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

  3. Cool the mustard before bottling.

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 + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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 sharp pungent flavor and the body of the mustard.
Burnt flour or starch
Thickens the mustard and gives it a smooth, jelly-like body.
Vinegar
Softens the seed and adds acidity that sharpens the flavor.
Ground cloves
Adds warm aromatic spice flavor.
Allspice
Adds warm aromatic spice flavor.
Malegueta pepper
Adds peppery heat to the mustard.

The step that matters

Regrind until jelly-like. Repeated grinding breaks the seed particles down so the mixture thickens into a smooth, spreadable texture rather than a grainy paste. Stopping early leaves the mustard coarse and loose.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mustard, flour, vinegar, clove, allspice, pepper):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Radishfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mustard, 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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