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Tartar Mustard

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

Prepare the mustard

  1. Rub the Durham mustard smooth with the salt.

  2. Gradually add the horseradish vinegar.

  3. Mix in the cayenne and tarragon vinegar to taste.

Prepare the horseradish

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

  2. Let it sit overnight, preferably 2-3 days, before using.

Combine

  1. Combine the horseradish mixture with the mustard mixture.

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 + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together901 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Horseradish + tarragontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together73 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Pepper + tarragontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Vinegar + tarragontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,547 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
Forms the smooth base and carries the mustard's sharp bite.
Horseradish vinegar
Adds sharpness and acidity that brightens and preserves the sauce.
Scraped horseradish
Supplies the pungent, sinus-clearing heat that defines the sauce.
Cayenne pepper
Adds a lingering background heat.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds acidity and a light herbal aroma.

The step that matters

Letting the mixture rest before use. Horseradish and mustard taste harsh when freshly made. Resting lets the sharp pungency soften and the flavours blend, so using it too soon gives an unbalanced, aggressive sauce.

Swap the horseradish

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mustard, pepper, vinegar, tarragon. 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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