Skip to main content
Drink

Made Mustard

A homemade mustard condiment made with best English mustard, salt, sugar, pepper, salad oil, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Mustard and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,067 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Made Mustard

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mustard

  1. In a bowl, combine the mustard and salad oil, stirring with a wooden spoon until smooth.

  2. Gradually add vinegar until the mixture forms a stiff paste.

  3. Mix in salt, pepper, and sugar thoroughly.

  4. Continue to add vinegar little by little until the consistency resembles cake batter.

  5. Beat the mixture for a short time, then transfer it to mustard bottles.

Rest and store

  1. Pour a little oil on top and let it sit for 24 hours before using.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Mustard + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,424 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. White pepper + vinegartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Mustard + white peppertop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together618 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

English mustard
Provides the main flavour and pungency that defines the condiment.
Vinegar
Thins the paste and adds acidity that sharpens the mustard's heat.
Salad oil
Blends with the mustard to give a smooth texture and mellow richness.

The step that matters

Adding the vinegar gradually. Adding vinegar too fast can leave the paste lumpy or too thin to control. Adding it little by little lets you reach a stiff paste first, then a batter-like consistency, so the texture stays smooth.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mustard, sugar, vinegar):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mustard, sugar, vinegar. 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.

More mustard recipes

Pickles 151Sauce 119French 50Tomato 49Pickle 39Tartar 34 See all 56 →

You might also like

Raspberry VinegarRaspberry Vinegar214 recipesSugar VinegarSugar Vinegar20 recipesVegetable SoupVegetable Soup350 recipesBrown Coffee with EggBrown Coffee with Egg175 recipes