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Eavigote Mustard

A mustard made from burnet, tarragon, chervil, garden cress, garlic, and mustard flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Tarragon and chervil match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 824 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Eavigote Mustard

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the herbs

  1. Pick half a pound each of burnet, tarragon, chervil, and garden cress leaves.

  2. Dip the leaves in boiling water for 1 minute, then immerse them in cold water.

  3. Place the leaves in a towel and press out all moisture.

Make the mustard

  1. Pound the leaves finely in a mortar, adding garlic if desired.

  2. Rub the mixture through a fine sieve and return it to the mortar.

  3. Add ½ pound of mustard flour diluted with water and mix well.

  4. Transfer the mixture to small bottles and cork them tightly.

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. Tarragon + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together824 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Chervil + garden cresstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Tarragon + garden cresstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together23 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Garden cress + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together18 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Burnet leaves
Add fresh, green herbal flavour to the mustard paste.
Tarragon leaves
Contribute a distinctive aromatic, slightly anise-like flavour.
Chervil leaves
Add a delicate, fresh herbal aroma to the paste.
Garden cress leaves
Add a peppery, sharp note that complements the mustard.
Mustard flour
Provides the sharp pungency and body that gives the paste its character.

The step that matters

Press out all moisture from the leaves. Leftover water dilutes the mustard flour and weakens its sharp flavour and paste consistency, so the leaves must be dried thoroughly before pounding.

Swap the clove

The recipe marks clove as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tarragon, chervil, garden cress, garlic, mustard, flour):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tarragon, chervil, garden cress, garlic, mustard, 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.

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