Mustard Sauce
Take four spoons of dry mustard, one-nait teaspoon sugar, one saltspoon of salt and one tablespoon melted butter; mix well with boiling vinegar or water. apples; pare, chop and place in a deep pudding dish; sprinkle a heaping coffee-cup of sugar, and one of water over them. Bake in the oven, slowly, two hours or more, until they are of a rich red-brown. Serve with goose, pork, game, etc.
Two distinct condiments sit in this entry: a quick mixed mustard, and a slow-baked apple sauce for roast meats. Both are simple, but the measurements need translating.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon is generally reckoned a quarter teaspoon.
- "Four spoons" of mustardThe book does not say which spoon. Four tablespoons of dry mustard against one tablespoon of butter and a half teaspoon of sugar gives a very fierce sauce; four teaspoons is the more plausible reading for a table condiment. Start small and build.
- Dry mustardThis means finely ground mustard flour, the Colman's-style powder, not prepared mustard from a jar. It has no heat until it is wetted.
- Boiling liquid dulls the heatMustard's pungency comes from an enzyme reaction that needs cool liquid and about ten minutes to develop. Boiling vinegar or water arrests it, producing a milder, smoother sauce that keeps; whether that was the intention here the recipe does not say. Cold liquid gives a sharper, more volatile mustard that fades within a day.
- Consistency and restingAdd the liquid a spoonful at a time to a thick paste, then thin. Let it stand twenty minutes before judging the seasoning; raw mustard flour tastes bitter and flat until it has hydrated.
- The baked apples"slowly" indicates a low oven; the recipe gives no temperature. Two hours in a deep dish with sugar and water reduces the juices to the rich red-brown the recipe wants; a firm cooking apple holds up better than a soft eating variety.
- YieldThe mustard makes a few tablespoons, enough for a table pot. The recipe does not say how many apples to use or how many it serves.
Dry mustard mixed at the table was the English standard well into the twentieth century, and American household books repeated the practice: prepared mustards were sold, but many cooks kept a tin of the flour and made up a spoonful or two fresh. The pairing here with goose, pork and game reflects an older logic of the table in which fat, dark meats were commonly answered by something sharp or sweet-sour, whether mustard, a fruit sauce, or both at once. Such pages belong to a wider body of practical household instruction aimed at a middle-class readership expected to manage a kitchen without a trained cook.