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Sauce

Prepared Mustard

A mustard-based condiment made with mustard, sugar, salt, boiling water, and olive oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and olive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,950 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Prepared Mustard

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. In a bowl, combine mustard, sugar, and salt.

  2. Pour boiling water over the mixture and stir until combined.

Finish the sauce

  1. Once cooled, slowly add olive oil drop by drop while stirring.

  2. Mix until smooth and well blended.

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 + olivetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Sugar + olivetop 35% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,483 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Sugar and olive barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,483 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 sharp, pungent flavour and helps hold the oil and water together.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the mustard with a touch of sweetness.
Olive oil
Adds richness and body, forming an emulsion with the watery base when whisked in slowly.

The step that matters

Adding the olive oil slowly. Oil must be added drop by drop while stirring so tiny droplets disperse evenly. Adding it too quickly can make the emulsion break, leaving the sauce greasy and separated rather than smooth.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Sweet potatofits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, olive. 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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