Excellent Mustard
Sept. 3-4 Translating the recipe
Recipe from Bnf Ms Fr 640
Excellent mustard
Dry some bread in an oven, then stick cloves & cinnamon into it and put it to soak in good wine. Then, being well crushed, pass everything through a cloth strainer and incorporate it with your mustard seeds.
We another recipe in a 14th century French book
(G.E Brereton and J.M. Ferrier, Le Menagier De Paris: A Critical Edition (Oxford, 1981), p. 258)
- If you want to make a supply of mustard that will keep long, make it during the picking-season (of wine grapes) from fresh stum. Some say the stum must be boiled.
- If you want to make mustard in a village (where there is no stum) in a hurry, grind white mustard[seeds] in a mortar, mix with vinagre, and strain through the sieve. When you want to use it immediately, put it in a pot near the fire.
- If you want to make good [mustard] at leasure, soak the mustardseeds during one night in fine vinagre, then grind in the mill, and mix in the vinagre gradually. When you have spices left over from making jelly, claret, hypocras or sauces, grind these with [the mustardseeds] and let it mature.
- Take one ounce cinnamon called long cinnamon in sticks, with some pieces of ginger and as much galanga, grind well together. Have a pound of fine sugar, and grind together and mix with a lot of the best wine of Beaune you can get and let this stand for one or two hours. Then let it run through a sack several times until it is clear.
Here we understand some of the tacit knowledge about the mustard:
- 1. According to the website, stum is grape juice that is not not fully fermented.
- 2. The cloves and cinnamons should be grounded in a mortar.
- 3. The mustard seeds should be white mustard seeds.
- 4. The mustard seed should be grounded in a mortar.
The Le Menagier de Paris didn’t mention the cloth. So Diana checked the French translation:
- "Puys passe tout par lestamine estant bien pile."
The we checked the Randle Cotgrave, Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues (London, 1611):
- “Estamine: f. The stuffe Tamine; also, a strayner, searce, boulter, or boulting cloth; (so called, because made (commonly) of a thinne kind thereof.)…Passer par l’estamine. To straine; to bring unto the touch; to put unto proofe, or tryall; to pass the pikes.”
- So we checked what is a boulting cloth, and the result is:
- “Tamis: m. A searce, or boulter; (also a strayner) made of haire.”
So the cloth should be a tammy cloth. But it is hard to acquire a tammy cloth. So we decided to use a cheesecloth instead.
The later recipe didn’t mention anything about the bread. So we decided to use a whole grain bread. The bread should not be so important since it will be throw away after making the mustard.
Expectation about the result
Diana found descriptions about the texture of the mustard:
The author of Bnf Ms Fr 640 refers to mustard’s density elsewhere in the manuscript:
- “And stir it with your palette so that it all becomes like a thick sauce or light mustard.” (121v casting in silver)
- “…then apply a thick coat (as thick as mustard or a little bit thicker) over the medal…” (89v white glassmakers’ sand mixed with ammonia salt)
- “…adjust it with such attentiveness that, while mixing it vigorously and wetting it quickly with a wooden spoon, it does not become thicker than mustard…” (113v sand casting)
So we assume the mustard should be thick.
Sept. 5 First Trial
Place: 521 W. 112th
Preparation of the ingredient
- Bread: whole wheat, from fairway, 11 ounce
- Wine: the youngest French Bordeaux (2012) from the winery next to Columbia University, 1.5 cups
- Cinnamon: 2 sticks
- Cloves: 50
- White mustard seeds: 1/8 cup
Tools
- Marble mortar (from Bath, Bed, and Beyond)
- Cheesecloth
- Pot bowl
- Standard cup sets
Process
- 1. Cut the bread into three slices and put it in oven at the temperature of 300 F for 18 minutes.
- 2. Ground the cinnamon, cloves, and the mustard seed. The mustard seeds took around 30 minutes. After practice, we found mustard seeds should be grounded in small portions.
- 3. Take the bread out and put the grounded cloves and cinnamon in the bread.
- 4. Put the wine into the bread, and crushed it with the stick that came with the mortar. In this process, the smell changed to be a very pleasant smell.
- 5. Put the bread into the cheesecloth and squeeze juice to the bowl.
- 6. Mix the juice with grounded mustard seed. The smell was great
Result and discussions:
The result was very a very thin liquid mixed with mustard seed. They don’t really mix well. The husks of the mustard were floating on the juice of the wine and spices. It was nothing like the description we found in the same manual, which says mustard should be “thick.” We tasted it. It was REALLY strong. My stomach burnt for two days.
We also tasted the left over of bread in the cloth, just in case that we were using the wrong part. It was filled with fragments of spices. So we were sure that we should use the filtered juice instead of the left over in the cloth.
Adjustments
Based on the sensuous experience, we decided to make following
- 1. Dip the bread in the wine for 20 minutes to get the starch from the bread.
- 2. Cup the use of mustard into half: 1/16 cup of mustard
- 3. Sieve the grounded mustard. We tasted the mustard and found out that the flavor of the mustard was in the center, and the musk was tasteless.
Sept. 8 Second Trial
Place: 521 W. 112th
The ingredient and the process were the same except from the three adjustments.
Result and discussion
After dipping the bread into the red wine for 20 min, the bread became really dry and very hard to squeeze. We at the end only got a spoonful of paste to mix with the grounded mustard.
The mustard looked much more fine than the last time since we sieved it. It mixed well with the paste.
The taste was still strong. We looked back to the 14th century recipe and found that in the recipe, the author added “a pound of fine sugar” to the spice mix-hippocras, and the wine they used was grape juice. So we guess the mustard in the 14th century recipe should contain a good amount of sugar. Therefore we mixed our mustard with honey, and it tasted really good!
Cooking with mustard
I also found some other recipe cooking with mustard from
Een notabel boecxken van cokeryen
Het eerste gedrukte Nederlandstalige kookboek
circa 1514 uitgegeven te Brussel door Thomas vander Noot
bezorgd en van commentaar voorzien door
Ria Jansen-Sieben en Marleen van der Molen-Willebrands
63. Pekele [mosterdsaus] tot eenen capuyn.
Neemt luttel mostaerts ende wijn ende minghelt dat tsamen in een panne. Ende doet daertoe smout [vet] van den capuyne met wat souts. Dan doet dat wel tegader sieden [koken] totter tijt dat dick genoech es. Dan doeget al heet rechten [opdienen]. Maer sommighe doender inne ghefruuten ajuyn [ui].
64. Pekele [mosterdsaus] tot eenen capuyn.
Neempt tvette van den smoute [het bovenste van het vet] oft van den sope van den vissche als hi ghesoden [gekookt] es. Als hi stait [ligt] in sijn waveraet, dan blaest het vetste af oft scheppet met eenen lepele af. Dan neempt mostaert ende onderrueret wel. Dan suldi dese sause rechten [opdienen] in saucieren [sauskommen].
Also from
Transcriptie van het Tractaet van de campernoillien (1668)
Italiaense mostaert tot de fungi
De Italianen stampen ghepelde amandelen soo kleyn als ‘t moghelijck is, daerby doende wat loock ghestampt, olie en sap van limoenen al samen ondereen roerende tot een consistentie ofte dickte als mostaert, hetwelck sy witten mostaert noemen. Waermede sy de fungie eten, eensdeels om den goeden smaeck, maer princepael voor medecijn hetwelck sy segghen, soo iemandt quade fungie hadt ghe-eten, door desen mostaert sou gheconserveert wesen sonder hinder.
So the mustard should also be used as a kind of seasoning for cooking to balance the humorism. According to the author of the website “…mustard had the same properties as for example pepper. So, mustard was an excellent replacement for spices not only because it was cheaper, but also because it was just as good for a balanced diet.”
Photos from our ppt
excellente moustarde (1).pptx