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Keeping Mustard

A preserved mustard made by mixing salt, water, horseradish, and mustard flour, then bottling.

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 ↓

Keeping Mustard

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the brine

  1. Dissolve the salt in boiling water.

  2. Pour the hot solution over the scraped horseradish.

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

Make the mustard

  1. Strain the mixture and gradually mix in the flour of mustard.

  2. Beat the mixture well until it reaches the desired thickness.

  3. Transfer it to wide-mouthed bottles and cork them 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. Horseradish + flourtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together743 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. 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

Flour of mustard
Provides the main pungent flavour and thickens the mixture into a paste.
Scraped horseradish
Adds sharp, pungent aroma and heat to the finished mustard.
Salt
Draws out moisture and seasons the mixture while it stands.

The step that matters

Beat the mixture well until it reaches the desired thickness. Mustard flour thickens as it hydrates and its heat develops gradually, so judging thickness by sight alone can lead to a mixture that is too thin or too stiff. Beating evenly distributes the flour and water so the paste sets smoothly.

Swap the mustard

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against horseradish, flour. 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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