September 8, 2014

Diana Mellon
"Excellente moustarde," BnF Ms Fr 640
Trial 2, with Yijun Wang & Michelle Lee

modifications from our first attempt:

• using 1/2 cup less wine
• letting spices and bread soak in wine for 20 minutes instead of 0 minutes
• the bread is older now, so a bit stiffer, though we will "dry" it in the oven for the same amount of time
• trying to grind the mustard seeds more, and now sifting them through a metal sieve to catch husks and make end product finer
• doing a trial with an electric spice grinder (for the mustard seeds), just for comparison

results:

• the bread/spice/wine mixture is somehow extremely difficult to strain through the cheesecloth, even though we are only straining through one layer of cheesecloth rather than two (last time)... why is this the case? is it because we let the mixture absorb into the bread longer?
• as a result of this much thicker paste, what is strained through the cheesecloth is much more pasty and less liquid than last time. in fact, the texture resembles mustard as we know it today. the difficulty of squeezing the mixture through the cheesecloth does not seem right, though--we are able to extract only very little from the mixture
• our final product has a good texture but is extremely small in quantity.
• we end up using only a small portion of the ground mustard seeds, and the taste is still very strong
• overall, our final mustard is still rather unpleasant to eat! must is sweeter than fully fermented red wine, so perhaps this would have lent sweetness to the mustard? we try mixing honey into the mustard and it tastes much better. we would recommend adding honey or sugar since must is not readily available!