Skip to main content
Main

Mustards

A homemade mustard made from soaked mustard seeds, vinegar, salt, horseradish, black pepper, and optional sugar, brandy, or cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Mustards

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Soak mustard seeds in vinegar for 24 hours.

  2. Grind the soaked seeds to a fine paste.

Season and store

  1. Mix in salt, horseradish, black pepper, and sugar if using.

  2. For a creamier mustard, stir in cream.

  3. Store in a clean jar and refrigerate.

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 + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Horseradish + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,646 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

Mustard seeds
Provide the main body and sharp, pungent flavor once ground.
Vinegar
Softens the seeds during soaking and adds sharp acidity.
Horseradish
Adds sharp, pungent heat that complements the mustard.
Cream
Adds richness and a smoother, milder texture when stirred in.

The step that matters

Soaking the seeds for the full 24 hours. The vinegar needs time to soften the seeds so they grind into a smooth paste. A shorter soak leaves the seeds hard, producing a gritty texture and a harsher, less balanced flavor.

Swap the horseradish

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mustard, vinegar, pepper, sugar, brandy, cream):

  1. Horseradishthe original
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Lettucefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against mustard, vinegar, pepper, sugar, brandy, cream. 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 recipes

Pickles 151Sauce 119French 50Tomato 49Pickle 39Tartar 34 See all 56 →

You might also like

Horseradish SauceHorseradish Sauce17 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes