Mean Mr. Mustard: Jeremiah Colman once remarked that he had made his fortune from what people left behind on the side of their plates.
Cutting the Mustard
In which we learn an unusual amount about one certain condiment
By Brett Ascarelli
Judging by his portrait, Pope Jean XXII, who ruled from the picturesque town of Avignon during the early 14th century, was a dour man with a penchant for yellow satin mantles lined with fur. But his humorless visage must have masked a creative impulse. Strapped to find a job for his nephew, who reportedly lacked the brains for a cardinalship, the pope devised a new position: grand moutardier du pape, or "grand mustard maker to the people." Thus was born the expression "the pope's moutardier" to describe an unintelligent person who is well-connected.
Mustard remained an indispensable spice for society's most upper crust, and three hundred years later, Louis XIV insisted on packing a pot of mustard to accompany him on all his voyages, a royal security blanket of sorts for the Sun King.
But mustard also enthralled the populace, taking hold of the collective imagination and offering solutions to an array of practical dilemmas. A German peasant woman would sew mustard seeds into the hem of her wedding gown to ensure that she'd wear the pants after marriage. The mustard seed also makes a cameo in the Bible as a parable about how something tiny can grow into something strong and powerful.
In India, mustard seeds distributed around the perimeter of a dwelling are said to ward off evil spirits. In Denmark and ancient China, mustard was used as an aphrodisiac. And ever since pre-Hippocratic times, when Greek scientist Pythagoras first wrote about it as a treatment for scorpion stings, people worldwide have used mustard preparations medicinally to treat everything from epilepsy to toothaches. Even the Bard writes it into Henry IV, Part 2, when Falstaff says, "His wit is as thick as Tewkesbury mustard!"
At its piquant heart, mustard is the most populist of spices. Practically ubiquitous, it has never carried the price tag of rarity, unlike its imported brethren peppercorn and vanilla. The hearty mustard plant enjoys the resiliency of a weed and knows few geographical boundaries, growing anywhere and everywhere. After marketing genius Jeremiah Colman founded his eponymous English mustard in 1814, it eventually garnered such attention that Queen Victoria appointed him as royal mustard maker in 1866.
In the 1920s, a Colman's ad campaign called upon the talents of novelist Dorothy Sayer (then slumming as an ad copywriter) to conceive of a fake group, the so-called Mustard Club. The club was peopled by the likes of Lady Di Gester and Master Mustard, Lord Bacon of Cookham and other punny players. For some seven years, the Mustard Club flourished, attracting hundreds of members, creating a short film, filing a prank lawsuit against a restaurant that allegedly refused to make its mustard fresh each day and producing a monthly newsletter, a recipe book, club songs and even a deck of playing cards. The brilliant thing about the Mustard Club was that everyone could belong.
To this day, the spice retains much of its accessibility, albeit one limited to more conservative and mostly palate-related purposes.
Now fields in the North Bay are aglow with the bright yellow blooms of the mustard plant. However, even in an age ruled by science, the plant's wintertime presence here is still explained by legend. It is said that many years ago, the Spanish missionary Father Junipero Serra scattered Spanish mustard seeds along his Missionary trail.
And then of course, there's mustard's role in the lure of tourism. Now in its 13th year, the annual Napa Valley Mustard Festival, which started as a way to entice tourists to the area during the slow season, is a two-month-long series of festivities in honor of the pungent spice.
Ironically, Napa's nonnative mustard plants are not one of the varieties used in condiment making, though they can be served as greens. Popular among vintners and grape growers, the weedlike plant also ad