Skip to main content
Main

Prepared Mustard

A simple mustard condiment made with ground mustard, flour, sugar, boiling water, vinegar, and salt.

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

Why it works: Mustard and vinegar 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 ↓

Prepared Mustard

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. In a bowl, combine the ground mustard, flour, and sugar.

  2. Pour boiling water over the mixture and stir until smooth and thick.

Cool and finish

  1. Allow the mixture to cool.

  2. Once cooled, add vinegar to achieve desired consistency.

  3. Serve with salt.

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 + vinegartop 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. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Ground mustard
Provides the sharp, pungent flavour that defines the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells in the hot liquid.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that softens the mustard's bite.
Boiling water
Hydrates the flour and sugar and heats them so the starch thickens.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and adjusts the sauce's sharpness.

The step that matters

Stirring in the boiling water. Flour lumps if it meets hot liquid unevenly. Stirring while pouring disperses the starch so it hydrates and thickens into a smooth sauce.

Swap the mustard

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

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

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

More mustard sauce recipes

Tomato 24Horseradish 8 See all 119 →

You might also like

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