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To Mix Mustard
Take half a cup ground mustard, one tablespoonful sugar, four tablespoonfuls vinegar, olive oil, or water, whichever is preferred, one teaspoonful pepper, and one of salt.--Mrs. P. W.
A table mustard mixed from dry powder, of the kind kept in a covered pot on the sideboard. The proportions are workable but stiff, and the liquid you choose changes the result more than anything else.
- The hinge: cold liquid, then waitGround mustard develops its heat only when the powder meets cold water and sits about ten to fifteen minutes. Hot liquid or an immediate hit of vinegar kills that reaction and leaves a mustard that tastes merely bitter.
- Vinegar sets the heatIf you want a sharp mustard, mix the powder with a spoonful or two of cold water first, let it stand, then beat in the vinegar. Mixing straight into vinegar, as written, gives a milder, longer-keeping paste intended.
- ConsistencyHalf a cup of dry mustard is roughly 1.5 to 2 oz, and four tablespoons of liquid will give a very stiff paste. Expect to add liquid a spoonful at a time until it spreads; period table mustard was thicker than the squeeze-bottle kind.
- Ground mustardThis means dry mustard flour, not prepared mustard and not whole seed. An English-style yellow mustard powder is probably the nearest modern equivalent.
- Which liquidWater gives the hottest and most perishable mustard; vinegar tastes acid-sharp but keeps the heat down and the paste stable; oil is the mildest and richest. Olive oil alone will not hydrate the powder properly, so use it with a little water or vinegar.
- PepperAssume black pepper, freshly ground. A teaspoon in this quantity is assertive, and worth cutting by half on a first attempt.
- Yield and keepingAbout half a cup of prepared mustard. Refrigerated in a closed jar it keeps for weeks; the heat fades steadily after the first day or two, and a water-mixed batch fades fastest.
Table mustard was a domestic job well into the nineteenth century: the powder was bought by the tin or ground at home from seed, and each household mixed it fresh in small batches because prepared mustard did not keep its pungency. Commercially milled mustard flour was widely available by the time this book was collected in the 1870s, which is why the recipe begins at "ground mustard" rather than with a mortar. The choice offered here between vinegar, oil and water leaves the mixing to the cook's own purpose. Like much of Housekeeping in Old Virginia, the entry is signed with a contributor's initials rather than a full name, the book being a compilation of recipes gathered from many Virginia housekeepers.