Skip to main content
Main

White House Mustard

A mustard condiment made with egg, vinegar, mustard, sugar, flour, and salt.

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

Why it works: Vinegar and mustard 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 ↓

White House Mustard

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, mix the dry ingredients: mustard, sugar, flour, and salt.

  2. Beat the egg in a separate bowl and add it to the dry mixture.

  3. In a saucepan, heat the vinegar until hot.

  4. Gradually add the egg mixture to the hot vinegar, stirring continuously until it thickens.

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. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Mustard + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,066 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Mustard
Provides the main sharp, pungent flavor of the sauce.
Egg
Thickens and binds the sauce as it heats and sets.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the mustard its tangy sharpness.
Flour
Helps thicken the sauce and gives it a smooth body.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar and mustard with sweetness.

The step that matters

Gradually add the egg mixture to the hot vinegar, stirring continuously. Adding the egg slowly while stirring gently raises its temperature, so the proteins set into a smooth thickened sauce rather than scrambling into lumps.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Shallotfits about as well
  2. Mustardthe original
  3. Arrowrootfits about as well
  4. Cucumberfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, vinegar, sugar, flour. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes