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Kespino Mustard

A mustard condiment made by mixing salt, vinegar, horseradish, and mustard flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Horseradish and mustard 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 ↓

Kespino Mustard

Ingredients

Directions

Make the infusion

  1. Dissolve the salt in the boiling vinegar.

  2. Pour the hot mixture over the scraped horseradish in a jar.

  3. Cover the jar tightly and let it stand for 24 hours.

Thicken and bottle

  1. Strain the mixture and gradually mix it with the mustard flour until smooth and thick.

  2. Transfer to a wide-mouthed bottle and seal it tightly.

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. Horseradish + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Horseradish + flourtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together743 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Vinegar + horseradishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,066 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

Coarse sea salt
Seasons the mixture and helps draw flavor out of the horseradish.
Vinegar
Acidic liquid that extracts horseradish flavor and gives the mustard its sharpness.
Scraped horseradish
Supplies the pungent heat and aroma that define the condiment.
Mustard flour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth, spreadable paste.

The step that matters

Gradually mixing the strained liquid into the mustard flour. Adding liquid slowly and stirring keeps the flour from clumping, so the mustard ends up smooth and evenly thickened rather than lumpy.

Swap the horseradish

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

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

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