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To Make Mustard

A simple homemade mustard made by mixing mustard flour with boiling 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 ↓

To Make Mustard

Ingredients

Directions

Make the paste

  1. Mix the mustard flour with boiling water until thick and smooth.

  2. Add salt.

  3. Store in a small jar, covered tightly.

Thin and finish

  1. Mix mustard with new milk gradually until smooth.

  2. Add raw cream.

  3. Optionally add sugar to soften the mustard.

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. Mustard + flourtop 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

Mustard flour
Supplies the mustard flavour and heat, and thickens into a paste once hydrated.
Boiling water
Hydrates the flour so it swells and forms a thick, smooth paste.
New milk
Adds moisture that loosens the paste into a smoother, creamier texture.
Raw cream
Adds fat that gives the mustard a richer, rounder mouthfeel.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that softens the sharp bite of the mustard.

The step that matters

Mix in the milk gradually. Adding the milk a little at a time lets the thickened flour absorb the liquid evenly, so the mustard becomes smooth instead of lumpy or stiff.

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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