Thought for Food
Mustard and White Wine
By ELIZABETH DAVID
From the day 1 heard the story, now five or _six years ago, 1 started experimenting with various kinds of mustard, a condiment which until then 1 had used only rarely. 1 still do not want it neat with my food. (To some, mustard is a stimulant; to others an irritant. That it has both properties is, 1 see, confirmed by Potters,* a reliable source of reference in such matters.) In dishes made with English or Gruyere cheeses, in cream sauces for chicken and fish (about two teaspoons to three-quarters of a pint of sauce), in a parsley butter (a scant teaspoon to 2f oz. butter) to eat with steaks or grilled salmon, to spread on food such as pig's trotters, breast of lamb, chicken, rabbit, to be subsequently breadcrumbed and grilled or baked, certain kinds of mustard can be immensely enhancing. Like Boulestin I prefer French mustard to English because I find it less brutal and more aromatic, while English-made copies of French mustards—and 1 have tried a good many—all seem to me lacking in resemblance to their French counterparts in strength, flavour and aroma. In any case there should not now be any need to buy imitations; there is a plentiful supply and variety of the genuine article on the market. Most respectable delicatessen and grocery shops stock one brand at least. The one I most frequently buy comes from the old Dijon firm of Grey-Poupon---their moutarde forte an vin blanct—a yellow mustard packed in glass jars or in those familiar blue and white china mustard pots. The colour, when mustard is to be used as a flavouring for a white or other pale-coloured sauce, is important; brown mus- tards may taste as good as yellow ones, but tend to turn the sauce a rather unattractive colour. Then, Maille's Dijon mustards are justly famous, but their distribution in this country appears to be erratic. Florida brand Champagne * POTTERS NEW CYCLOP/EDIA OF BOTANICAL DRUGS AND PREPARATIONS. By R. C. Wren. FLS. 1956 edition re-edited and enlarged by R. W. Wren, MPS, FLS, FCS. (Pitman, 37s. 6d.)
'I' Imported by Kiril Mischeff Ltd., I I Monument Street, EC3.
$ Imported by Costa and Co. Ltd., Staffordshire Street, SEI5. Costa are also distributors for Grey- Poupon.
§ Imported by Fregata, 83 Cromwell Road, SW7.
mustard$ from Epernay is excellent, and well distributed. Bornibus, the Paris firm for which Dumas the younger wrote a lengthy dissertation on the history of mustard embodying a puff for them which appeared in the advertisement pages of his Grand Dictionnaire de Cuisine, 1873 edition, is exporting a terrifically strong but true-flavoured yellow mustard§ mixed with vinegar rather than the white wine now more generally used for ,French yellow mustards. I have never in the past greatly cared for Borni- bus products, finding them too fanciful and mixed-up, but this particular one is capital for cooking purposes (although 1 could do without the gold-banded tumbler which, the importers at the Delicatessen Exhibition assured me, is worth 2s. and turns into a whisky glass when empty) in that being so powerful it goes twice as far as most others and maintains its flavour pretty well, another important asset; the reason that French cooks give instructions to add mustard to sauces only in the final stages of cooking being the rapidity with which mustards lose their aromas when subjected to heat; then there is the strange case of a mayonnaise or remoulade for a shredded celeriac salad; this needs a flavouring of mustard so strong that by itself it would be uneatable. For this purpose pure yellow mustard flour, English or the Canadian product now sold in some super- markets, does excellently; so does the Bornibus- made mustard; in either case, to be stirred with the egg yolks before the addition of any oil; and the more concentrated the mustard and the less you have to use the better for the consistency of the finished sauce.
Robert May, author of The Acconsplisht Cook, first published in 1660, the year of the Stuart restoration, gives interesting instructions as to the different ways in which mustard was then mixed in England and in France (where he had received part of his training). 'Have good seed, pick it, and wash it in cold water, drain it and rub it dry in a cloth very clean; then beat it in a mortar with strong wine-vinegar; and being fine beaten, strain it and keep it close covered. Or grind it in a mustard quern, or a bowl with a cannon bullet. Otherways Make it with grape- verjuyce, common-verjuyce, stale beer, ale, butter, milk, white-wine, claret, or juice of cherries. Mustard of Dijon, or French mustard. The seed being cleaned, stamp it in a mortar with vinegar and honey, then take eight ounces of seed, two ounces of cinnamon, two of honey and vinegar as much as will serve, good mustard not too thick, and keep it close covered in little oyster barrels.' Incidentally, two of the dishes to which Robert May is insistent that mustard should be an accompaniment are herrings and brawn; things haven't changed all that much.
May's Dijon method is confirmed by Dumas over 200 years later. He quotes a recipe which explains what is not made quite clear by May, that the mustard seed was first steeped over- night in vinegar, then pounded with more vine- gar, plus whatever spices, wine, honey and so on you might choose to add.
Today, the Dijon firms (Dumas asserts that the founder of Maille invented ninety-two kinds of mustard) have simplified matters. White wine, mustard seed, salt and spices are the sole ingre- dients listed on the Grey-Poupon label. In bizarre contrast, the newest English product, a tomato mustard manufactured by a London firm using the brand name La Favorite, contains 'tomato ketchup, spirit vinegar, mustard seed, flour, salt, sugar, edible oil, spices, tragacanth, flavouring.'
Apropos the pickled oysters and meat pud- dings of which I wrote a fortnight ago, a reader tells me that the best steak and kidney pudding she ever tasted had a pickled onion cooked in the centre of the meat. 'The flavour was rich and delicious but not oniony in the usual sense.'
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