To mustard or not to mustard?
Americans consume about 2.8 pounds of mustard (half a gallon!) annually which amounts to $2.5 billion for mustard makers. Most popular brand is French’s yellow mustard in a squeezy bottle. It is yellow because of added turmeric powder. R.T. French of Rochester, N.Y., developed the recipe for the yellow condiment in late 19th century, but it was his sons who began serving it on hot dogs at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair, and, oh my my, business boomed. By 1912, they had to build a new facility at 1 Mustard Street in Rochester.
But mustard the condiment has been around in all its flavors for millennia. Folks who know how to do this claim they found evidence of mustard powder mixed into an 11,000-year-old seed cake. This was in Syria, and the genus of the evidence was Sinapsis, which is extant today and used in making not only the condiment but biofuels.
Mustard pastes of many flavors were common as sunrise around the world. Royals in China 2000 years ago treated guests to mustard paste appetizers. It was not in a squeezy plastic bottle. Gardeners in India, the Mideast and Egypt and all around the Mediterranean had local mustard recipes. Many recipes included fruit. Romans ground Sinapsis seeds and mixed them in grape juice with every herb in the kitchen plus honey and oil to make mustum ardens, a condiment to slather on fire-roasted boars. For the record, this is second-hand information.
Then Roman empire spreaders took the mustard madness to Gaul, and monks in the Dijon area took it from there. Over many years, they produced a mustard paste popular enough that in late 19th century businessman Maurice Grey and financier Auguste Poupon went into mustard production with the first automatic mustard-making machine. We loves our mustard.
Use of mustard in England was common enough that Shakespeare’s Falstaff stated, regarding someone else’s intellect, “His wit’s as thick as Tewkesbury mustard.” Falstaff was referring, of course, to the hearty consistency of mustard made in the mustard hot spot of England. Some mustards are thick and hot, some not. An inventory of recipes for mustard would be a geography and culinary lesson. A reasonable question would be what made mustard so irresistible that folks personalize it wherever it showed up?
For example, if you don’t eat hot dogs, do you need mustard? Maybe. Historically, it was smeared onto meats (later pretzels), but that’s not all. A damp ball of ground mustard seed mixed with flour and spices such as cinnamon would be dried and used later. Clever folks just like us did that, but I, for one, never have. Also, traditional medicine tells us your favorite mustard combined with lemon juice and honey soothes a person’s sore throat. Mix mustard with mayonnaise with other seasonings for dipping. That combination in my kitchen is called mayonard, not musternaise, or one of those. I forget.
The Tilney mustard variety is the source of many varieties used in yellow mustard. It has light yellow seeds which make a less pungent paste. To make a mustard, you mix ground mustard seeds with vinegar, liquids (even wine), a variety of spices to make a paste. The taste and color will depend on ingredients, principally the kind of seeds. Black and brown mustard seeds are hotter than light-colored seeds. Southern Giant Curled is a typical mustard grown in the South for its greens. It is mild, so my math indicates it would have yellow or light-colored seeds.
Legend holds that Father Junipero Serra in northern California in the 18th century sowed mustard seeds wherever he went. Across the road from my workplace in 20th century northern California were hectares resplendent in vibrant yellow mustard flowers in spring, eventually replaced by curvy streets and houses with extravagant Christmas displays.
The first Saturday in August is National Mustard Day. There is a National Mustard Museum in Middleton, Wis. For comparison, there is no National Mayonnaise Museum, and Shakespeare never mentioned mayonnaise.