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Keeping Mustard

A preserved mustard condiment made by mixing salt, vinegar, horseradish, and mustard flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Horseradish and mustard 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 ↓

Keeping Mustard

Ingredients

Directions

Make the vinegar infusion

  1. Dissolve the salt in the boiling vinegar.

  2. Pour the hot mixture over the scraped horseradish.

  3. Cover the jar tightly and let it stand for 24 hours.

Make the mustard

  1. Strain the mixture and gradually mix it with the mustard flour.

  2. Beat well until smooth and of the desired thickness.

  3. Transfer to a wide-mouthed bottle and seal it 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. Horseradish + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Horseradish + flourtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together743 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,066 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

Mustard flour
Provides the pungent flavour and thickens the mixture into a paste.
Vinegar
Carries the flavour and adds acidity that keeps the mustard tangy.
Horseradish
Adds sharp, pungent heat that infuses into the vinegar.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the mixture and helps dissolve into the vinegar.

The step that matters

Strain the mixture and gradually mix it with the mustard flour. Adding the flour gradually while mixing prevents lumps, so the mustard becomes smooth and reaches an even thickness rather than clumping.

Swap the horseradish

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

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

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