Skip to main content
Main

Made Mustard

A quick mustard condiment made with mustard, water, salt, oil, sugar, egg yolk, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Made Mustard

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Pour boiling water over the mustard.

  2. Add salt, olive oil, and sugar, stirring slowly.

  3. Beat the egg yolk and mix it in.

  4. Add vinegar to taste.

Rest

  1. Let it sit overnight.

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 + olivetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Olive + vinegartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,297 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  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

Mustard
Provides the sharp, pungent flavour that defines the sauce.
Egg yolk
Emulsifies the oil and water so the sauce becomes thick and smooth.
Olive oil
Adds fat and richness, giving the sauce a smooth mouthfeel.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the richness.

The step that matters

Beat the egg yolk and mix it in. The yolk is the emulsifier that holds the oil and water-based mustard together. If it is added too quickly or not beaten well, the sauce can separate or stay thin and greasy.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Cucumberfits about as well
  3. Mustardthe original
  4. Asparagusfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against olive, sugar, egg, 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.

More mustard sauce recipes

Tomato 24Horseradish 8 See all 119 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes