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Sauce

Mustard

A mustard condiment made by mixing flour, water, salt, milk, cream, and optional sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Mustard

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mustard

  1. Gradually mix the best Durham flour of mustard with boiling water until a proper thickness is achieved, rubbing it smooth.

  2. Add a little salt and store in a small jar, covered tightly.

Make it for immediate use

  1. For immediate use, mix mustard with new milk until smooth, then add a little raw cream.

  2. Optionally, add 1 teaspoon of sugar to half a pint of mustard for sweetness.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Best durham flour of mustard
Provides the mustard flavour and, hydrated with water, forms the thick paste.
Boiling water
Hydrates the mustard flour so it swells and thickens into a smooth paste.
New milk
Loosens the paste and adds a mellow, creamy body for immediate use.
Raw cream
Adds richness and a silky texture to the mustard.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that softens the sharpness of the mustard.

The step that matters

Gradually mix the flour with boiling water until smooth. Adding the water gradually and rubbing the paste smooth prevents lumps and lets you reach an even thickness. Mustard flour hydrates unevenly if the water is added all at once, leaving dry pockets that dull the texture and flavour.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, milk, cream, sugar. 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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