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French Mustard
1/4 Pound Mustard 4 1 Pint of Vinegar and Water, equal proportions Rice Flour, Salt, Calamus Root, Honey Pour water and vinegar over mustard, add pinch of salt, calamus root size of pea. Put it on the fire and when it boils add tablespoon of flour; let boil twenty minutes, stirring constantly; just before taking it off, stir in teaspoon of honey.
When cool, bottle and cork tightly.
This is a boiled, vinegar-based table mustard of the sort sold in the late nineteenth century as "French" — but it is built around calamus root, which is no longer permitted in food.
- Calamus is the problemAcorus calamus (sweet flag, calamus root) contains β-asarone, which caused intestinal tumours in rodent feeding studies. The U.S. FDA prohibited calamus and its derivatives as food additives in the 1960s, and it remains barred; the European position restricts β-asarone to trace levels in flavourings. A pea-sized piece is a small dose, but there is no established safe intake and the compound is the reason the ban exists.
- Not a substitution jobCalamus was in this recipe for its warm, bitter-aromatic note, not as filler. There is no drop-in replacement that reproduces it, and the sensible course is to use a current mustard recipe rather than adapt this one.
- "1/4 Pound Mustard 4"The stray 4 has no evident function in the ingredient line and is most likely a typesetting or list-marking artefact. Since water and vinegar are poured over the mustard, the quarter pound is presumably dry ground mustard powder rather than prepared mustard.
- Rice flour and honeyRice flour is the thickener; a tablespoon into roughly a pint of liquid gives a pourable sauce, not a paste. The honey goes in at the very end, just before the pan comes off the fire, so it gets minimal cooking.
- The twenty-minute boilLong boiling is what makes this a mild mustard. Heat and prolonged contact with acid destroy the enzyme myrosinase and drive off the pungent isothiocyanates, which is why boiled mustards taste round and sweet rather than sharp.
- Bottling and keeping"Bottle and cork tightly" is not a preservation method by modern standards. The vinegar and mustard give some protection, but it is diluted by half with water and the sauce is thickened with starch and sweetened, so a corked bottle kept at room temperature should not be assumed shelf-stable.
"French mustard" in Anglo-American cookbooks of this period rarely meant anything made in France; it was a shorthand for the mild, smooth, vinegar-thinned style associated with Dijon and Bordeaux, as against the fierce English mustard mixed fresh from powder at the table. Home-made versions like this one appear in household and bridal manuals of the period. Calamus root -- sweet flag -- was a familiar item in the nineteenth-century pantry and pharmacy alike, sold candied and used in bitters and cordials, and valued for a spicy, slightly ginger-like aroma. Its removal from the food supply in the twentieth century is a good marker of how far the line between kitchen ingredient and regulated substance has moved.