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Salad

Common Mustard

A simple mustard made from mustard flour, salt, and water, optionally sweetened with sugar and milder with milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,066 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Common Mustard

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine mustard flour and coarse sea salt in a plate.

  2. Gradually mix in boiling water until a smooth consistency is achieved.

  3. Stir continuously with a broad-bladed knife or wooden spoon until perfectly smooth.

  4. For a milder mustard, substitute sugar for salt and use boiling milk instead of water.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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 + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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
Provides the pungent flavour and thickens into a paste when hydrated with liquid.
Boiling water
Hydrates the mustard flour, releasing its heat-activated pungency and forming the paste.
Boiling milk
Replaces water for a milder mustard, softening the sharpness and adding richness.

The step that matters

Stir continuously until perfectly smooth. Mustard flour must be fully hydrated and worked evenly so it forms a uniform paste; lumps stay dry and taste harsh. The pungency also develops over the minutes after mixing, so the flavour may change as it rests.

Swap the mustard

The recipe marks mustard as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, sugar, milk):

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

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