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Tartar Mustard
Put a table-spoonful of the best mustard into a cup with a pinch of salt and a pinch of cayenne, and rub it down to a smooth paste, using horse-radish vinegar instead of water. Be careful to mix no more than will be required for one day's use, as the preparation is better when freshly made.
A one-cup condiment rather than a dish, and the whole point is that it is made fresh and eaten the same day. Two details do the work: the mustard is powder, not a jar of prepared mustard, and the liquid is horseradish vinegar.
- "The best mustard" means dry powderIn Cassell's day mustard sold to households was generally ground seed sold as flour — what we now call mustard powder or English mustard powder. A tablespoon of powder makes not much more than a couple of tablespoons of finished paste; the recipe does not say how many it is meant to serve, only that it is a single day's worth.
- Horse-radish vinegarA flavoured vinegar the book assumes you keep on the shelf: grated fresh horseradish steeped in vinegar for a week or so, then strained. If you have none, a plain vinegar with a teaspoon of finely grated fresh horseradish stirred in gets close; bottled creamed horseradish will not, as it carries dairy and sugar.
- Why it must be freshThe heat of mustard comes from an enzyme reaction that starts the moment the powder meets liquid, peaks within about fifteen minutes, and then fades as the volatile compounds escape. Left overnight the paste turns flat and merely bitter, which is exactly what the last sentence is warning about.
- Vinegar slows the reactionAcid checks the enzyme, so mustard mixed straight into vinegar comes up milder and stays stable a little longer than mustard mixed with water. If you want more bite, slacken the powder with a teaspoon of cold water first, wait ten minutes, then work in the horseradish vinegar.
- Rub it downAdd the vinegar a few drops at a time and work the paste against the side of the cup with the back of a spoon. Pouring the liquid in at once gives lumps that will not smooth out afterwards.
- CayenneA pinch is literal — perhaps an eighth of a teaspoon. Victorian cayenne was often adulterated and variable in strength; modern ground cayenne is consistently hot, so start small and taste.
- ServingA table mustard of the kind that would suit cold roast beef, boiled tongue, ham and pork pies, though the recipe itself names no dish. Horseradish loses its pungency when heated, so this is not a mixture to cook into a sauce.
"Tartar" attached itself in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century English cookery to a range of sharp preparations — sauce tartare and the various "tartar" vinegars and pickles — and the name is often said to gesture at the Tatar horsemen of the Eurasian steppe, though that derivation is best treated as folk etymology rather than any real borrowed recipe. Mustard was a British domestic staple by the time Cassell's appeared: since the eighteenth century it had been sold as a fine flour, the Durham and later Norwich trades having established the habit of buying powder and mixing it fresh at home, which is why the recipe treats a tablespoon of dry mustard as an obvious starting point and spends its final sentence on the keeping rather than the making.