Name: Another Tartar Mustard
Ingredients: 1 tablespoon coarse sea salt; 1 tablespoon mustard powder; ½ cup horseradish vinegar; ½ cup common vinegar

Why it works: Mustard and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,832 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Another Tartar Mustard

Ingredients

1 tablespoon coarse sea salt
1 tablespoon mustard powder
½ cup horseradish vinegar
½ cup common vinegar

Directions

Mix the salt and mustard powder together until smooth.
Add the horseradish vinegar and common vinegar, mixing well.
Transfer the mustard to jars or bottles and seal tightly for storage.

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.

Mustard + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,832 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together14,067 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Horseradish + vinegartop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,609 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

Mustard powder: Provides the sharp heat and flavor that develops when the powder meets liquid.
Horseradish vinegar: Adds acidity and horseradish pungency that gives the mustard its character.
Common vinegar: Supplies acidity and liquid that hydrates the mustard powder and balances its bite.

“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.