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Prepared Mustard

A thick mustard paste made with ground mustard, flour, sugar, boiling water, vinegar, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,067 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Prepared Mustard

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the paste

  1. In a bowl, combine the ground mustard, flour, and sugar.

  2. Pour boiling water over the mixture and stir until it forms a smooth, thick paste.

  3. Allow the paste to cool.

Finish and serve

  1. Once cool, add enough vinegar to reach your desired consistency.

  2. Serve with salt.

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 + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Mustard + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,066 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Mustard + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,424 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Ground mustard
Provides the sharp, pungent flavor that defines the paste.
Flour
Thickens the paste by absorbing liquid, giving it body.
Sugar
Softens the sharpness of the mustard and balances the flavor.
Vinegar
Adds acidity and tang, and loosens the paste to the desired consistency.

The step that matters

Let the paste cool before adding vinegar. The paste thickens as it cools, so its consistency can only be judged once it is cool. Vinegar added while hot loses much of its sharp aroma to heat, and adding it too early can make the paste thinner than intended.

Swap the mustard

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, vinegar. 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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