[Continued from Part 1]
From Seed to Condiment
To transform mustard seeds into the condiment mustard, gather the seeds from one or more of the three species listed above, grind them, sift out the hulls (optional), and mix the resulting powder with a cold liquid and the desired spices and flavorings [Antol, p. 13]. The mustard seed has a flavor that is naturally spicy and pungent. The exact flavor of a mustard depends on the type of mustard seed used and the method of preparation. Mixing the mustard seed with water, wine or vinegar releases the natural taste. Water gives a more pungent taste, but the taste will last longer with wine or vinegar. (It is not necessary to grind the seeds. they can also be used whole, cracked, or bruised,)
Keep in mind that you need to gather a lot of seeds since they are small; see the pictures of seeds above. Antol [p. 6] counted 1654 seeds of black mustard in a teaspoon. In fact, their tininess and their familiarity to a largely agrarian audience made them good teaching tools in the New Testament. They are exploited at Matthew 17:20, which uses the familiar phrase,"If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed...," and Luke 17:6, which uses almost the same phrase.
(You might wonder why I don't cite the parable of the mustard seed, which appears three times in much the same form in Matthew 13:31-32, Mark 4:30-32, and Luke 13:18-19. The reason is that these verses, if taken literally, say that this seed grows into a tree, which is not the case for true mustards. For example, Luke 13:19 says, "...a mustard-seed which ... grew to be a tree" (translation from the New English Bible). Therefore, this parable appears to refer to some other plant; some scholars think that it might be Salvadora persica, sometimes called the mustard tree but more frequently called the toothbrush tree, in the family Salvadoraceae. Some commentators, rather than take the verses literally, interpret the verses in a way that leads to the conclusion that this parable refers to true mustards, with some adducing further arguments that lead to the conclusion that all verses refer to black mustard. Google "What species of mustard appears in the Bible?" and you will quickly go crazy reading the various interpretations. Compared to Bible scholars, scientists are in perfect agreement on everything.)
The Entomology of Mustard
If you lounge outside in New England in the summer, the butterfly that you will see most often is the cabbage white. Two pictures from the Internet are below. In the first, the butterfly appears to be on something like broccoli. In the second, it is on garlic mustard; in this picture you can see the nondescript white flowers as well as the seed pods, which are stick-like and curve away from the stem and up. This species of butterfly will only lay eggs on plants that contain mustard oils, and it almost always lays on mustards [Scott, p. 216]. The mustard family is sometimes informally called the cabbage family; this explains the name of the butterfly. The commonness of this butterfly testifies to the ubiquity of the mustards.
The Ecology of Sweet and Sour
Why are mustard seeds spicy? It's an old story that we have encountered repeatedly, most recently in the discussion of cacao seeds (16 May 2015). A mustard plant is more successful if animals don't eat the seeds, so it has evolved chemicals in the seeds that repel the herbivores; these are the chemicals that humans interpret as spicy. We have seen how plants manipulate the herbivores by attracting them with sweet or repelling them with sour. For example, the fruit of the cacao tree contains pulp and seeds. The plant has arranged for the pulp to be sweet, so this attracts the herbivores, typically monkeys, who take the fruit and run away with it to eat it. The cacao seed has evolved to be bitter, so as the monkeys eat the pulp they extract and drop the seeds, thus doing the plant's bidding by dispersing the seeds away from the parent. But plants go far beyond this simple trick. If the seeds have not yet matured, then the plant arranges for the fruit to be sour, i.e., unripe, so the herbivores avoid it. When the seed is mature, then the plant causes the fruit to ripen and become sweet, so that herbivores are now attracted; the plant often signals ripeness to the herbivores by changing the color of the fruit, e.g., from green to red. (Recall from the e-mail of 12 July 2014 that this led to the evolution of color vision in primates.) In this way a plant manipulates the herbivores in various ways as time passes to induce them to do what the plant wants. The conclusion: Don't think that those sedentary, seemingly insentient plants aren't masters of their environment. It's all part of the grandeur of evolution.
Mustard plants have evolved seeds that are so small that they get dispersed by wind, water, and other natural mechanisms, so the plant does not need animals to disperse its seed. Therefore, the fruit of the mustard, i.e., the seed pod, is almost all seed with minimal wrapping, and the mustard seed has evolved so that it is distasteful to animals. (Remember, animals include insects.) There is no pulp since the mustard plant does not need a sweet pulp to attract seed-dispersing animals. This means that the mustard plant can focus its resources on producing lots of seeds and need not divert resources into producing pulp. This is the strategy that mustards have evolved to solve the problem of surviving and succeeding in the evolutionary race.
There is one chink in mustard's armor. Mammals taste spiciness, but birds don't, so birds feast on mustard seeds [Antol, p. 6]. This means that if you want to discourage squirrels from raiding your bird feeder, fill it with mustard seeds.
Mustard Art: Mustard Pots
For centuries, before mustard was sold in glass jars, a mustard pot was an indispensable household item. These mustard pots inspired a flowering of artistic creativity.
Mustard pots are a good model for those who want to bring art to the masses.
Mustard Plasters
I have always heard the phrase "mustard plaster" but had no idea what one was or what it did. The time to find out has arrived. It turns out that the basic idea is that you mix mustard powder and water together to make a paste, put the paste on a towel or cloth of some kind, fold the towel over or otherwise secure the paste in the towel, and that is a mustard plaster, which you apply to some body part. In short, a mustard plaster is mustard paste inside a protective dressing. For instruction on how to make a mustard plaster, you can go this this video or this site.
A long list of healing properties is claimed for the mustard plaster, but the most frequent claim is that it will break up congestion. One theory is that it works because a chemical passes from the mustard through the skin and works its effect. The Internet is crammed with overheated praise for mustard plaster and its healing qualities. These sites have earthy names like Herbwisdom. (Google "Benefits of mustard plaster" to find a wealth of sites.) Does mustard plaster actually work? The crackpots confidently state that it is effective against all kinds of ailments, e.g., reduces congestion, relaxes stressed muscles, soothes aches, relieves painful joints, eases inflammation, relieves backache and sciatica, treats an irritated kidney, draws out splinters, and reduces the chance of infection [Antol, p. 36], but for proof they depend on assertion and appeal to the wisdom of the ages. Sites that look at evidence say that there is no scientific evidence one way or the other on the effectiveness of mustard plaster. There is, however, conclusive evidence that it can have serious side effects; for example, it can blister the skin, as shown in the last picture below. A survey of a number of sites leads me to guess that mustard plaster can increase blood flow to the surface of the skin, so it is potentially of use in cases where this is needed, but there are other methods of achieving the same result with much less risk, e.g., Ben Gay.
Here is a rant from a commentator, who observes that in the 19th century a mustard plaster
...was held up as cutting edge medicine, right along with bloodletting and induced vomiting. Back then, college educated doctors didn't have much more science in their heads than your grandma, and these remedies clearly did something, and for a while there it seemed vitally important that a treatment make something happen, whether or not that something was actually helpful or not....alternative medicine works like that--it's usually unhelpful, but it's unhelpful in a way that makes you feel good about yourself, so it's become big business. But back in the heroic medicine days, Heroic mustard plasters were competing against equally unhelpful home-made [remedies], and today Herbalist mustard plasters are competing against antibiotics and Tylenol and a host of other scientifically verified remedies. It's just no contest. Or it shouldn't be. [Emphasis in original]
I have a lot of sympathy with the idea that those who think that mustard plasters are a good idea are perpetuating the excusable errors of the ignorant past so that they become the inexcusable errors of the semi-enlightened present.
Mustard Miscellany
If you prefer whole grains in your diet, you can get whole-grain mustard in which whole seeds are mixed with the other ingredients.
Phytoremediation is the removal of heavy metal contaminants from the soil by plants. It turns out that mustards are effective at phytoremediation since they absorb lead, chromium, cadmium, zinc, and copper. This property was discovered when it was noticed that mustards grew thickly in polluted areas. Compared to other methods of clean-up, mustards have the advantage costing perhaps a tenth as much as other methods and the disadvantage of taking three to five times as long as successive crops of mustard are grown and harvested. The mustard plants that collect the heavy metals are burned, and this concentrates the heavy metals in the ash, which can be recycled or cheaply stored since the volume is so small. (This paragraph is drawn from Antol [pp. 53-57], with confirmation from this site, this site, and this site. To read further in this area, google "Mustard and phytoremediation.")
Mustard gas is not derived from the mustard plant. It got its name from its yellow-brown color and its smelling like mustard, garlic, or horseradish. (Horseradish is in the mustard family, garlic is not.) Movie star Rondo Hatton, known as the Monster without a Mask, owed his deformed features to his having been through a mustard gas attack in World War I, though some dispute that mustard gas was the cause.
Oil of mustard is a powerful massage oil that provides deep heat [Antol, p. 7]. It must be used with great care to avoid blistering the skin.
When mustard seed is mixed with water and drunk, it induces vomiting. Therefore, if you take chocolate laced with poison (16 May 2015), mustard can be used to bring up the poison if you don't have any citron handy (14 Mar 2015).
Black mustard is usually considered to be the most flavorful mustard. A drawback is that the seeds of this plant must be harvested by hand, so it is exclusively grown in areas where the wage rate paid to pickers is shockingly low, e.g., Ethiopia and India [Antol, p. 80].
You should consider growing mustard in your garden so that you can reap the following benefits [Antol, p. 80]:
...mustard plants are not difficult to grow, and the rewards are threefold: Tender young leaves add peppery flavor to salads or pungency to the cooking pot, mustard greens are a flavorful side dish that can pep up any meal, and the seeds of all varieties are easy to harvest and store.
Travel Tip
Here are three travel tips. First, for the unadventurous, visit the National Mustard Museum, 7477 Hubbard Ave., Middleton, WI. Second, for the more daring, visit the headquarters of Grey Poupon at 32 Rue de la Liberte in Dijon, France [Antol, p. 21]. If you want to hit both, it is 6978miles from Middleton to Dijon. Third, attend the Napa Valley Mustard Festival, which provides excitement in Northern California each year in February and March when the grape vines are brown; this event includes the Worldwide Mustard Competition [Antol, pp. vii, 96-97].
Party Tip
Yes, fruit mustards exist! As Wikipedia says:
Fruit and mustard have been combined since the Lombard creation of mostarda di frutta in the 14th century. Large chunks of fruit preserved in a sweet, hot mustard syrup were served with meat and game, and were said to be a favorite of the Dukes of Milan. Traditional variations of fruit mustards include apple mustard (traditional in Mantua and very hot), quince mostarda (or mostarda vicentina, mild and with a jam-like appearance) and cherry mustard. In various areas of Italy, the term mostarda refers to sweet condiments made with fruit, vegetables and mosto, grape juice that gets simmered until syrupy. [Footnote and links omitted. Inconsistent italicization not corrected.]
Your party tip is to allow your guests to make a fruit mustard with their own hands from scratch. For detailed recipes you can go to Antol [p. 111, 112], but the general procedure is simple. Provide your guests with mustard seeds and a sifter and superintend as they execute the following steps..
- Grind the seeds. To make this hands-on, provide your guests with mortars and pestles.
- Sift out the hulls from the ground seeds. This leaves mustard powder. (There are two options here. First, the hulls can be left in if desired; they will appear as harmless flecks in the finished mustard. Second, if you don't have enough mortars and pestles, you can skip these first two steps and just provide your guests with mustard powder, which is readily obtainable.)
- Add a cold liquid to the mustard powder until the desired consistency is obtained. Examples of suitable cold liquids are water, grape juice, wine, and vinegar,
- Mix in fruit flavorings. You can provide a selection of zests and marmalades. Also, provide a few whole fruits for guests who prefer fresh fruit. Marmalades and fruits should be squeezed through the sifter to prevent the mustard from being chunky, unless this is what you want. Keep in mind that including fruits robs mustard of its property that it never goes bad. (Guests who prefer a more traditional mustard can omit this step.)
- Mix in other desired spices and flavorings. So that your guests can exercise their individuality and artistic bent, provide a selection, e.g., cinnamon, paprika, tarragon, dill, basil, thyme, oregano, rosemary, lemon juice, sesame oil, and garlic.
- Serve hot dogs so that your guests can try all of these newly created mustards in their natural setting.
- Have your guests vote on their favorite mustard. Crown the maker of the winning mustard as the Mustard Master. Design a suitable crown that you place on the head of the Mustard Master as your guests sing "Mean Mr. Mustard" from Abbey Road. (If you don't have time to make a crown, you can buy a Mustard Happens or a Squeeze Me apron from the on-line gift shop of the National Mustard Museum.)
Gift Idea
For the mustard maven on your shopping list, you can't do better than to give him or her the pack of the eight Grand Champion Mustards, with recipes, as advertised in the first picture of this e-mail for $49.95 plus S&H.
Final Word
No matter where you travel,
No matter where you roam,
Mustard on the table
Will make you feel at home.
--Barry Levenson [Antol, p. 87]]
Rick
Appendix: Notable Spring Mustards of Decatur Street
Decatur Street, the street I live on, is only three blocks long and is thickly settled; nevertheless, it has so far this year provided six wild members of the mustard family. Since for mustards the seed pod is more distinctive than the flower, this appendix focuses on the variation in seed pods of these six species.
Unless otherwise stated, I took all the pictures below on Decatur Street in April (whitlow grass) or May (the rest). It is often hard to take good pictures of mustards because they are so sparse and hard to pick out from the background, because some plant parts are so small, and because it is hard to get all the parts of the plant in focus at the same time. Therefore, these pictures tend to be of lower quality than usually appear in these posts.
Whitlow Grass (Draba verna)
The first wildflower that I saw this year was a mustard called whitlow grass. I saw it on 22 Apr 2015, which is about three weeks after I usually see it due to our hard and long-lasting winter. A picture that I took is below. Since this is not a very clear picture, another picture from the Internet is also shown; this second picture gives you a better sense of the plant. In this second picture you can clearly see the seeds pods, which look like little pointed footballs. I include my picture only because if you look around in this picture, you can see several instances of the seed pods emerging from the flowers. The key point is that the seed pods are distinctive. I don't know of any other mustard in New England with seed pods like this, so this property allows a quick way to identify this plant. The flowers, which are tiny, often only about 1/16 of an inch wide, are often shriveled so that you can't even tell how many petals there are; you can often see that the flowers are white and that's about all. My picture captures the unhelpful nature of the flowers; the second picture, like most on the Internet, show the flowers in the uncharacteristic position of being wide open and easy to see; you can even see that each petal is deeply notched so that it looks like there are eight petals; this picture is misleading since you rarely see such well developed flowers. The name of whitlow grass comes from the belief that it could treat finger sores known as "whitlows" [Niering, p. 429].
Garlic Mustard (Alliaria officinalis)
The second butterfly picture above shows garlic mustard. This plant is a standard entry on everyone's hit list of invasive plants. It was not common in 1981 when I first started looking at plants, and now it is ubiquitous. At Bartholomew's Cobble, a nature preserve in Western Massachusetts that is a favorite place, I was surprised a few years ago to see a sign that invited visitors to uproot any garlic mustard that they saw. This was very surprising not only because people tend to uproot the wrong species but also because nature preserves are usually unbending in demanding that visitors not touch a thing; this testifies to the fear and loathing inspired by garlic mustard. Do not confuse garlic mustard the invasive plant with garlic mustard the condiment that is made by combining mustard powder with garlic. Here are some pictures.
- A typical stand of garlic mustard that crowds out other plants (Internet).
- Two garlic mustard plants with seed pods (Internet).
Yellow Winter Cress (Barbarea vulgaris)
I have stated that for me the official first day of spring is when I see my first queen bumblebee (1 May 2015). The sign that winter is really over, however, is when I see my first yellow winter cress in bloom. This is always a happy occasion as if I were seeing a friend that I hadn't seen in a year. The happy occasion usually occurs in the third week of April, but this year it didn't occur until May 7. (For me the official first day of summer is when I see my first blue toadflax in bloom; this year it occurred on Jun 8, which is in the typical range.) (This plant is called "common winter cress" in the picture above from Newcomb. Common names of plants are variable; get used to it. The sad fact is, however, that scientific names are also variable; get used to this, too.) Here are pictures of yellow winter cress.
- A drawing that shows the leaves, flowers, and seed pods Internet).
- An exceptionally robust yellow winter cress in full bloom. It is about two feet tall. Every year among the plants there are winners and losers depending on conditions. Yellow winter cress is one of the winners this year in that the plants have been especially common, large, and flower-laden.
- Flowers and seed pods (Internet).
- A close-up showing the seed pods.
Shepherd's Purse (Capsella bursa-pastoris)
This was named by someone, probably inebriated, who thought that the seed pod looked like a shepherd's purse, whatever that is. This is one of the commonest weeds around Boston, and one view of life is that it consists of a series of trips from one specimen of shepherd's purse to another. Here are pictures.
- A growing specimen (Internet).
- An entire plant, uprooted. (It's hard to show an entire plant in the wild with all the parts visible and in focus.)
- Close-up of seed pods on a stem.
- Close up of a seed pod.
Wild Peppergrass (Lepidium virginicum)
Wild peppergrass is marked by its plethora of flat,round seed pods, each about an eighth of an inch across. It got its name because its seeds are supposed to have a peppery taste and can be used as a pepper substitute for seasoning food [Niering, p. 430]. I once tried it and couldn't taste anything.
- Drawing (Internet).
- The top part of a growing plant (Internet). At the tip you see pepper grass in full flower. This picture, as well as the first picture above of shepherd's purse, shows you that mustard flowers can be teeny tiny; each flower is about the size of a noseeum. (As usual, the Internet has hundreds of pictures, but none of them show a good picture of an entire plant. Also as usual, the Internet pictures tend to overemphasize the showiness of the flowers.)
- An uprooted plant.
- Close-up of seed pods.
Mouse-ear Cress (Arabidopsis thaliana)
This inconspicuous little plant, usually less than a foot tall and so spindly as to be barely visible even when you are looking right at it, has performed great feats for science; it is used at the model organism that is often used to do research on flowering plants, just as fruit flies or rats are used as model organisms in many research studies of animals. Mouse-ear cress was chosen as a model organism because it was once thought that it had the smallest genome of all flowering plants and thus was the simplest to study. (A plant with a smaller genome has since been discovered.) Otherwise, this is a plant of no special significance. Here are pictures.
- Typical specimen of this plant (Internet). (The reason it is uprooted is that this is about the only way to get a decent picture of this retiring plant that usually nestles among other plants.)
- To show the difficulty of taking a picture of this plant in its natural setting, here is the best picture of mouse-ear cress in Mike's library of pictures. He took this picture in Belmont in 2009. It shows a typical mouse-ear cress. You can see the basal rosette of leaves at the bottom just to right of center and can then almost follow the stem upwards to the indistinct flower cluster, which is about three-quarters of the way up the picture.
- An entire plant on Decatur St. (This and the next two pictures use a cardboard box to hide the background and try to make this plant stand out. This plant is more ramified than usual; it appears that mouse-ear cress is also a winner this year.) (In this picture and the next the T-ball Jotter fails to accurately show the scale since it is behind the plant. This makes the plant look bigger than it is.)
- Zoom-in to show the plant better.
- Close up of seed pods and flowers. Just above the center of the picture you can see a seed pod emerging from a senescent flower.
Comparison of the Mustard Seed Pods
A purpose of this appendix has been to deepen your appreciation the variability of mustard seed pods, where this variability in part lies in the size, shape, and orientation relative to the stem. The picture below shows relative sizes and shapes of the seed pods of all the mustards covered in this appendix except whitlow grass. I picked these seed pods on 28 May 2015; by then the whitlow grass plants had withered away, and I couldn't find any seeds even when I sifted the debris at the spots where the plants had been. Recall that the seeds of whitlow grass look like pointed footfalls and are about as long as the seed of shepherd's purse (minus the stalk). The seed pod on top is garlic mustard, and the others from left to right are yellow winter cress, mouse-ear cress, shepherd's purse, and peppergrass. With just a little bit of study, you, too, will be able to bore your friends with disquisitions on mustard seed pods.
References
Antol, Marie Nadine, The Incredible Secrets of Mustard, Avery Publishing Group, 1999. This book is low-grade ore. It's nothing more than a quick snack. Much of it is irritating. (This book has a Foreword by Barry Levenson, the Director of the National Mustard Museum. Also, I bought this as a used book over the Internet, and a sticker on it shows that it was purchased at the National Mustard Museum, back when it was called the Mount Horeb Mustard Museum.)
Britton, Nathaniel Lord and Hon. Addison Brown, An Illustrated Flora of the Northern United States and Canada, Dover, 1970 (first published in 1915). This three volume work describes and pictures all of the known plants within its chosen range. It is now obsolete, but it resides in my library and is easy to use.
Langer, R.H.M. and G.D. Hill, Agricultural Plants, Cambridge University Press, 1982. This book is pretty dry.
Newcomb, Lawrence, Newcomb's Wildflower Guide, Little, Brown, 1977. This is the essential field guide for those serious about wildflowers in New England. Ninety percent of the field guides are worthless, with the main problem being poor organization that prevents you from finding a flower even if it's in the book, and another serious problem being low-grade pictures. This book combines a very good organization with evocative drawings.
Niering, William A., The Audubon Society Guide to North American Wildflowers: Eastern Region, Alfred A. Knopf, 1979. This is a good field guide for those in the Northeast who want to have fun with wildflowers but aren't going to obsess over exactly what species they have found. This book's strong points are a good organization, useful color photos, and about half a page of useful information on each plant. Its main weak point is that, due to the expense of color pictures, it covers many fewer species than Newcomb. (This suggests that the future of wildflower field guides lies on-line since any number of color pictures and drawings can be made available for any number of species. This would combine the best of Newcomb and Niering. In addition, this would allow the computerizing of identification keys. The trick will be delivering wi-fi to all the places that one goes to find plants.)
Scott, James A., The Butterflies of North America: A Natural History and Field Guide, Stanford University Press, 1986. This is my favorite butterfly book; it covers both knowledge of butterflies and identification. It is too big to carry into the field, so you need to net the butterflies and bring them home to identify them.
