Skip to main content
Sauce

Tartar Mustard

A condiment made from mustard, salt, vinegar, horseradish, and cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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. Rub the mustard very smooth with the salt.

  2. Gradually wet the mixture with the horseradish vinegar.

  3. Add the cayenne or chili vinegar to taste.

Steep the horseradish

  1. Pour boiling vinegar over the scraped horseradish.

  2. Let it sit covered overnight.

  3. Allow the mixture to stand for two to three days.

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

Best mustard
Provides the main body and sharp mustard flavor of the sauce.
Horseradish
Adds pungent heat that mellows as the mixture stands.
Strong horseradish vinegar
Thins the mustard and carries the sharp, acidic bite.
Cayenne or chili vinegar
Adds a sharp, spicy heat adjusted to taste.

The step that matters

Standing time after adding the boiling vinegar. Hot vinegar pulls pungent compounds out of the horseradish, and the flavor only settles and mellows during the long rest. Cutting the standing time short leaves the sauce harsh and unbalanced.

“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.

You might also like

Mixed MustardMixed Mustard9 recipesHorseradish Cream SauceHorseradish Cream Sauce6 recipesWine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipes