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Mustard to Keep

A preserved mustard made by mixing salt, water, 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 ↓

Mustard to Keep

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the brine

  1. Dissolve the salt in boiling water.

  2. Pour the hot mixture over the 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 proper thickness.

  3. Transfer to a wide-mouthed bottle and seal 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. Horseradish + flourtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together743 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. 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

Horseradish
Supplies the sharp, pungent flavour that gives this mustard its bite.
Mustard flour
Forms the body of the mustard and carries its pungent heat once mixed with liquid.
Coarse sea salt
Dissolves in the boiling water to season the mixture and help preserve it.

The step that matters

Let the mixture stand for 24 hours. Covering the jar tightly while the hot brine steeps over the horseradish lets its flavour infuse and keeps volatile aromas from escaping. Cutting the time short leaves the mixture weaker and less developed.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Beetrootfits about as well
  2. Mustardthe original
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Turnipfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against horseradish, flour. 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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