Raye's Down East Schooner Yellow Mustard

So… what’s mustard?

The recipe is pretty simple – you can even make it at home. You grind up mustard seeds, traditionally with a mortar and pestle, but you can use a spice grinder. Once the seeds are ground as fine as you want them, you add liquid. Usually that’s water or vinegar, but you could also use ale or fruit juice. Next add other seasonings. Salt is a good place to start, but you can use anything from herbs to honey. Mix it all together and you’ve got mustard.

What makes some mustards hot?

First, there’s a bit of natural chemistry at work. Mustard comes from the brassica family of plants and, as a defense, these plants developed a compound called sinigrin that turns into mustard oil. It’s that oil that feels like a punch in the nose. Mustard seeds come in white, brown, and black and get hotter as they get darker so black mustard seeds have the most sinigrin.

Second, mustard makers amplify the natural chemistry with recipes that kick up its heat. Warming mustard actually lessens the reaction, so the hottest mustards are made with very cold water. Adding vinegar can halt the reaction and maintain heat so a dash of vinegar is always found in the hottest mustards. Mustards mellow over time so the hottest are usually fresher. Mustards will keep pretty much indefinitely even at room temperature, but they’ll retain more of their pungency when refrigerated.

What’s the deal with Dijon?

Mustard made in the French town of Dijon has a long history of being considered some of the best; it was the mustard of choice for French royalty in the 14th century. There have been laws regulating how it’s made since 1407. These days, the laws stipulate that Dijon mustard must be made with brown or black mustard seed, the darker varieties, making it pungent. There’s a long tradition of using verjuice – the very tart juice of unripe grapes from nearby vineyards – to make Dijon mustard, and the acid helps to balance out the heat. The result is generally a mustard that’s smooth but packs a serious punch.

How did American mustard get so yellow?

A little over a hundred years ago Americans barely used mustard – it was sold mostly as a powder and it was hot. In 1904, Robert French launched a mild “cream salad mustard” that was spreadable and sales took off after it hit a hot dog at the St. Louis’s World Fair. French’s mustard is still a huge seller. Robert colored it yellow with turmeric to set it apart. Competitors copied the look and, ever since, the go-to American mustard has remained bright yellow and fairly bland (thanks to using only mild white mustard seeds). There’s more flavorful yellow mustard to be found out there; Raye’s in Maine makes an exceptional classic yellow mustard that I’ve always got in my fridge.

If you’re like ninety percent of Americans, you have mustard in your kitchen. Not so a hundred years ago. Back then, most mustard in the US was sold as a powder to be “constituted” at home—and it was really hot. In the 1880s, Robert French had the idea that Americans would prefer a milder mustard. Though Robert passed away before he could see his idea come to life, at the 1904 St. Louis World Fair his brother introduced a fairly mild, creamy mustard. Copying the most popular British mustards of the day, he added turmeric to make his mustard bright yellow. Business took off. A century later Americans are still wolfing down fairly mild yellow mustard.

Nostalgia for summers at the ballpark aside, most yellow mustards are pretty boring. They’re thin, they taste more like vinegar than mustard seed, and the flavor doesn’t last too long. But that doesn’t have to be the case. Take Raye’s Down East Schooner mustard. It tastes just like you’d expect yellow mustard to taste, but more mustardy—more yellow. The flavor is complex, and it lasts a long time.

Raye’s makes their mustard with a century-old set of 2,000-pound quartz millstones.

Raye’s is the only mustard maker in the US using traditional stone mills. The set of eight stones was quarried and carved in France in 1900, and J.W. Raye started making mustard with them in Eastport, Maine that same year. The eight stones make four mills: one stone lays flat while the second stone slowly spins above it, grinding the mustard seed, water, and vinegar into a paste. It’s nearly the same process that was traditionally used to make olive oil (and is still used by a very few oil producers, like Roi). Each batch of mustard passes through all four mills, getting smoother and creamier with each pass. Because the stones grind slowly, the temperature stays low, keeping more of the volatile compounds of the seed intact. These days, most mustard is made with machines that either crush the seeds at super high speeds or heat it up, essentially cooking it. The result is increased yields but decreased flavor.

They’re still using the same recipe they developed over 100 years ago.

One ingredient in that recipe is water from a 400-foot deep well. That well water is very cold—ground water absorbs the sun’s heat, but well water stays chilly in the cool ground all summer long just like a basement stays cooler than the rest of the house. The cold water helps to keep the temperature down during milling. After the mustard is made, it’s stored in big barrels for about six weeks before being jarred. Aging the mustard like that mellows its heat level a bit and creates a more balanced flavor. In contrast, commercial yellow mustard is bottled in less than a day. Even small-batch, hand-crafted mustards are generally bottled after just a couple of days.

Raye’s is the house yellow mustard used on sandwiches at Zingerman’s Deli.

Zingerman’s cofounder Ari Weinzweig’s favorite sandwich, the Oswald’s Mile High, has just three ingredients: corned beef, Jewish Rye bread, and Raye’s mustard. Its full flavor makes it great for slathering on a sandwich with brisket, pastrami, salami, cheddar, you name it; if it’s got a lot of flavor, Raye’s can match it.