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Tartar Mustard

A mustard condiment made with Durham mustard, salt, horseradish vinegar, cayenne or chili vinegar, and scraped horseradish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and horseradish 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 ↓

Tartar Mustard

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mustard

  1. Mix the Durham mustard and salt until smooth.

  2. Gradually add the horseradish vinegar.

  3. Stir in the cayenne or chili vinegar.

Prepare the horseradish vinegar

  1. For extra flavor, prepare horseradish vinegar by pouring boiling vinegar over scraped horseradish and letting it sit covered overnight or up to three days.

  2. Combine the prepared horseradish vinegar with the mustard mixture.

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 + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Durham mustard
Forms the base of the condiment and provides its sharp, pungent flavor.
Horseradish vinegar
Adds acidity and the sharp, pungent flavor of horseradish to the mustard.
Scraped horseradish
Infuses the vinegar with its volatile pungency during steeping.
Cayenne or chili vinegar
Adds heat and a sharp, peppery bite.

The step that matters

Steeping the horseradish vinegar. Pouring boiling vinegar over horseradish and letting it steep covered helps keep the volatile aroma compounds in the liquid, so the flavor is stronger when combined. Steeping too briefly gives a weaker, less developed flavor.

“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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