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German Mustard

A mustard condiment made by boiling vinegar with herbs, spices, and pure mustard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

German Mustard

Ingredients

Directions

Make the infusion

  1. Combine vinegar, tarragon, bay leaf, onion, garlic, crushed cloves, black peppercorns, and salt in a pot.

  2. Boil the mixture together.

  3. Strain the liquid and let it cool slightly.

Finish the mustard

  1. Mix the cooled liquid with enough pure mustard to achieve the desired consistency.

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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Tarragon + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together901 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Tarragon + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together548 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Garlic + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Onion + mustardtop 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

Pure mustard
Provides the main body and sharp flavour that the spiced vinegar liquid is mixed into.
White vinegar
Supplies the acidity that gives the mustard its tang and helps it stay stable.
Onion
Adds savoury sweetness and aromatic flavour to the infused liquid.

The step that matters

Let the liquid cool slightly before mixing in the mustard. The mustard is added to the strained liquid, so it should be cooled rather than hot. Very hot liquid can dull the sharp volatile compounds in mustard, weakening its pungency, and the mixture thickens more predictably once it is no longer steaming.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Dillfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, tarragon, onion, garlic, mustard. 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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