Name: Black and White Mustard
Ingredients: 1 cup mustard seeds; 1 handful horseradish; 4 cups wine; 6 tablespoons bruised mustard seeds; 2 cups milk; 2 cups water; sugar to taste; crumbs of wheat bread; strong 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 ↓

Black and White Mustard

Ingredients

Directions

Combine 1 cup mustard seeds and 1 handful horseradish in 4 cups of wine to create a tonic.
For mustard whey, boil 6 tablespoons bruised mustard seeds in 2 cups milk and 2 cups water until curds separate, then add sugar to taste.
For a poultice, mix equal parts crumbs of wheat bread and powdered mustard seeds, wet with strong vinegar, and apply to affected areas.
Use the tonic three times a day and the poultice as needed for rheumatism or poor circulation.

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).
Milk + wheattop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,418 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).
Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together14,067 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Wheat + breadtop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together209 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).
Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,466 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

Swap the horseradish

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mustard, wine, milk, sugar, wheat, bread, vinegar):

Shallotfits better
Capsicumfits better
Tomatofits about as well
Horseradishthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mustard, wine, milk, sugar, wheat, bread, vinegar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.