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Prepared Mustard
Take three tea-spoons ground mustard, one of flour (two if the mustard seems very strong), half tea-spoon of sugar; pour boiling water on these and mix into a smooth, thick paste; when cold add vinegar enough to make ready for use, and serve with salt. This resembles the French mustard. - Mrs. Mary Herbert Huntington.
A small-batch table mustard, made from dry powder rather than whole seed. The whole thing takes five minutes, and the only real skill is in the resting.
- YieldThree teaspoons of powder makes roughly two to three tablespoons of finished mustard — enough for one meal for a few people. Scale up freely; the proportions hold.
- Ground mustardThis is dry English-style mustard powder, not prepared mustard from a jar. Colman's or any plain yellow mustard flour works; the recipe's allowance for mustard that "seems very strong" suggests the heat of ground seed varied from batch to batch.
- Boiling water is deliberateHot water blunts the pungency by damaging the enzyme that generates mustard's heat. If you want a fiercer condiment, mix with cold water instead and let it stand ten minutes before adding anything acidic.
- Add vinegar last, and only when coldThe recipe is explicit about the order. Acid added to a freshly wetted mustard tends to fix a raw, bitter edge; adding it after the paste has cooled gives a rounder flavour.
- The flourWheat flour is a bulking and thickening agent, and it also softens the bite. Cooks who want a sharper mustard can reduce or drop it, accepting a thinner result.
- Vinegar to chooseThe recipe leaves the type open. White wine vinegar or cider vinegar suits the "French mustard" claim; distilled white gives a harsher, more industrial edge.
- Let it restFreshly mixed mustard tastes harsh and slightly bitter. An hour at room temperature, or better a day in the refrigerator, settles it considerably.
- KeepingRefrigerate in a small covered jar. It will hold a week or two, though it loses pungency steadily and the flour-thickened version can weep; make it in the quantities the recipe suggests.
Dry mustard powder was one of the most reliable items in a nineteenth-century American pantry — shelf-stable, cheap and sold everywhere. The reference to "French mustard" is doing real work here: in American usage the term broadly denoted a milder, vinegar-based style, smoother than the fierce English preparations made with water alone, and the sugar, flour and vinegar in this formula are all aimed at that softer profile. Buckeye Cookery, generally traced to an Ohio compilation of 1876 and reissued in expanded form thereafter, was put together from contributions by named women across the region, which is why this entry carries Mrs. Huntington's name. Commercial bottled mustard existed by this date, but a jar of it cost money, went stale, and could not be adjusted for a seed that "seems very strong."