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Mustard, Mixing Of
It should be made with boiling water, and only in sufficient quantity to last a day or two at most; if kept longer, the top of the mustard-pot should be fitted with a glass stopper, but fresh-made mustard is preferable. Put in a little salt before mixing, and rub it quite smooth with the back of a spoon. French mustard is to be had of any respectable grocer, but a particular flavour may be given to mustard by moistening with shallot, tarragon, garlic, or any spiced vinegar, instead of water.
This is a method rather than a formula: Cassell's assumes a tin of dry English mustard flour on the shelf and no measurements at all. The one instruction worth arguing with is the boiling water.
- Hot water blunts the heatPungency in mustard comes from an enzyme reaction that begins the moment the powder is wetted, and hot water largely destroys it. Cold or barely warm water, left to stand ten minutes, gives the fierce English mustard now usually wanted; boiling water gives a milder, flatter paste. The book does not say why boiling water is specified.
- Proportions, since none are givenStart with equal volumes of dry mustard and liquid — to two tablespoons of powder, two tablespoons of water, added a little at a time. That makes a small pot, in the spirit of the recipe's 'sufficient quantity to last a day or two'.
- Let it rest, then tasteFreshly mixed mustard is harsh at first; ten to fifteen minutes' standing lets that settle and the pungency come up, and the sharpness fades again over the following hours. The book's own reason for small batches is simply that 'fresh-made mustard is preferable'.
- Salt before the liquidAdding salt to the dry powder is sound, and it dissolves evenly and does not leave gritty patches. A large pinch per two tablespoons of powder is enough.
- The glass stopperThe book raises it only for mustard kept beyond a day or two, so it is at least partly about sealing the pot. Corrosion is a genuine issue too: mustard attacks pewter, silver and base metal. A glass or china pot with a glass or wooden spoon is still a sound choice; a screw-top jar seals as well.
- "French mustard""French mustard" -- In a British book of this date this means a ready-made, smooth, vinegar- or wine-based French prepared mustard, not the sweetened brown paste later sold under that name in Britain. The point being made is simply that French mustard is bought rather than mixed at home.
- Flavoured vinegarsSubstituting shallot, tarragon or garlic vinegar for the water works, but acid slows the enzyme reaction, so the result is milder and keeps better than a water-mixed pot. It is one of the differences between English table mustard and the Continental jarred kinds.
Dry mustard flour of the sort assumed here was a British specialism: the seed was milled, sifted and often blended from black or brown and white varieties, then sold to be mixed fresh at table. Tradition credits a Mrs Clements of Durham, in the first half of the eighteenth century, with the idea of grinding mustard seed to a fine flour like wheat, and "Durham mustard" remained a byword for quality long after; the Norwich firm of Colman, founded early in the nineteenth century, made the powdered form a fixture of the British larder. That commercial supply is precisely why Cassell's gives no recipe for the mustard itself, only for wetting it: the grinding was somebody else's business, and the cook's remaining skill lay in mixing a small, smooth, fresh pot each day and knowing that yesterday's mustard was not worth eating.