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Tartar Mustard

A mustard condiment flavored with salt, cayenne or chili vinegar, horseradish vinegar, and horseradish.

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. Rub the Durham mustard very smooth with the salt.

  2. Gradually wet the mustard with the strong horseradish vinegar.

  3. Add the cayenne or chili vinegar to taste.

Steep the horseradish and rest

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

  2. Let it sit overnight, but for best results, allow it to stand for 2-3 days.

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 flavour and body of the sauce.
Strong horseradish vinegar
Wets the mustard and adds sharp acidity and pungency.
Scraped horseradish
Supplies the pungent, sharp heat that gives the condiment its character.
Cayenne or chili vinegar
Adds extra heat and pepper flavour, adjusted to taste.

The step that matters

Rubbing the mustard smooth before adding liquid. Mustard flavour develops when the ground seed is wetted, and lumps left in the powder stay grainy and harsh. Working it smooth with salt first helps the liquid disperse evenly for a uniform texture.

“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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