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Sauce

Tartar Mustard

A spicy mustard condiment made with Durham mustard, horseradish vinegar, and cayenne or chili vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 ↓

Tartar Mustard

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mustard

  1. Mix the Durham mustard and coarse sea salt until smooth.

  2. Gradually add the strong horseradish vinegar until well combined.

  3. Stir in the cayenne or chili vinegar.

  4. For extra flavor, add tarragon vinegar if desired.

Steep and rest

  1. Pour boiling vinegar over the scraped horseradish and cover tightly.

  2. Let it sit overnight, or for 2-3 days for better flavor.

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. Vinegar + horseradishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Durham mustard
Provides the main mustard flavor and the body of the sauce.
Strong horseradish vinegar
Adds sharp acidity and pungent horseradish heat to the mustard.
Scraped horseradish
Contributes volatile pungency that mellows and deepens as it rests.
Cayenne or chili vinegar
Adds background heat and a sharper, spicier finish.

The step that matters

Cover tightly while the horseradish steeps. Horseradish's sharp aroma comes from volatile compounds that escape when heat and air are lost. Keeping the vinegar hot and the jar sealed traps them so the flavor stays pungent and develops evenly during the rest.

“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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