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Prepared Mustard
Take three tea-spoons ground mustard, one of flour (two if the mustard seems very strong), half tea-spoon of sugar; pour boiling water on these and mix into a smooth, thick paste; when cold add vinegar enough to make ready for use, and serve with salt This resembles the French mustard. - Mrs. Mary Herbert Huntington.
A small-batch table mustard made from dry powder, of the sort kept mixed fresh rather than bought by the jar. The quantities make barely two tablespoons.
- Ground mustardThis means dry mustard powder — Colman's or similar — not prepared mustard from a jar. Ground yellow (white) seed is milder; brown or oriental powder is sharper, which is why the recipe hedges on the flour.
- The flour is not fillerIt buffers the heat and gives the paste body. Increase it as directed if your powder is aggressive, or the result will be harsh rather than pungent.
- Boiling water changes the flavorMustard's pungency comes from an enzyme reaction that needs cool water and time; hot water deactivates it, producing a milder, more rounded mustard. That milder result is likely what the writer had in mind in calling it French-like. For a sinus-clearing English mustard, cold water and a ten-minute rest is the opposite approach.
- Add vinegar only when coldThe recipe is explicit that the paste should be cool before the vinegar goes in; it gives no reason, and the direction is best followed as written.
- Vinegar quantityGenuinely open-ended in the original — work in vinegar a teaspoon at a time until it spreads like a thin paste. The original names no particular vinegar and gives no amount.
- "Serve with salt"Reads oddly now, and the sentence is unpunctuated in the original; most likely it means salt is added at table rather than mixed in. Stirring in a pinch of salt with the sugar does no harm.
- Yield and keepingA small quantity, on the order of a few tablespoons once the water and vinegar are worked in. Fresh-mixed mustard is at its best soon after mixing and dries out on standing; make it as needed rather than storing it long.
Dry mustard powder was long a fixture of the American kitchen, and "prepared mustard" was often something the cook made rather than bought. The distinction the recipe draws is real: English-style mustard is mixed sharp and hot with cold liquid, while the French tradition, associated above all with Dijon, favors a smoother, milder paste worked with vinegar or verjuice, and boiling water is a quick way to get that gentler result. The Dixie Cook Book, like most compilations of its era, gathered such formulas from named contributors, so this is one household's proportions rather than an authoritative standard — hence the parenthetical allowance for powder that "seems very strong," since dry mustard varied considerably from tin to tin.