What is mostarda?
Mostarda is a typical Italian seasoning made with sweet fruit and mustard oil with a spicy and sweet savor that is traditional of the Lombard culinary tradition. Born from the need to preserve fruit, it is often the protagonist of winter recipes. It can be said that during Christmas, there is no table in Northern Italy without mostarda served slantingly boiled meats, roasts, or cheeses.
French and English mustard
While in Italy mostarda refers to a sweet and sour preserve of sweet fruit and mustard syrup, in France or England, the terms moutarde and mustard have a little variegated meaning.
The moutarde of Bordeaux, Orleans, and Dijon — a true flagship of French cuisine — are fruit-free and made from vinegar, salt, and mustard seeds. In some recipes, such as that of the moutarde Ă l’ancienne, the mustard seeds are partly ground into powder and partly left whole, so as to requite the sauce a grainy and increasingly rustic texture.
English mustard, moreover without fruit, is known all over the world as a golden yellow sauce obtained by mixing mustard seeds with water, sugar, salt, wheat flour, turmeric, and other spices.
A little history
The term itself can be a source of misunderstandings since mostarda, moutarde, and mustard each refer to variegated preparations based on mustard seeds, with or without fruit, as well as sometimes mustard itself. The term mustard derives from the Latin mustum ardens and appears for the first time in a French text of 1288, but it was the Romans, surpassing exporting mustard to France, who had tabbed it by this name, alluding to the must of the wine made ardente, that is, spicy, from the wing of mustard seeds. Without the end of the 13th century, both the mustard plant and the sauces obtained from it began to be tabbed moutarde, but without fruit.
However, the Romans used must to preserve fruit: in the De Re Rustica, Cato and Columella provide precise indications in this regard and are from Apicius; in the De Arte Coquinaria, recipes for preserving blackberries with sapa (cooked must) and quinces with honey and sapa are included. But these recipes did not include the wing of mustard, which was instead used to prepare sauces with which to savor meats and vegetables. Even today, in Sicily, we can find a mustard made only of cooked must and mustard flour.
During the Middle Ages, some culinary traditions of warmed-over Rome were revived and reworked, and it is this era that the lineage of mustum ardens, intended as mostarda di frutta, can be traced when and to, presumably in the shop of the apothecary. The tradition of the various Italian regions then gave rise to variegated mustards, but the most famous are undoubtedly those typical of Northern Italy, in particular the zone between the regions of Lombardy, Emilia, and Piedmont, as well as the Vicenza area.
The variegated types of Italian mostarda di frutta
The mostarda of Voghera
The history of Voghera’s mostarda dates when to at least 1397, the year in which Duke Galeazzo Visconti requested a zebro of sweet mustard fruit to trailblaze the meat on his table. This mustard, considered the progenitor of that of Cremona, is very rich in fruit and includes cherries, apricots, pears, mandarins, oranges, peaches, figs, melons, and pumpkins. The fruit is sweet and dipped in a syrup of mustard-flavored sugar and glucose.
The mostarda of Cremona
Around the 16th century, mostarda became a typical product of Cremona. By the end of the 18th century, 20 mustard factories were once active, mostly family-run wright businesses. The archetype recipe of Cremonese mostarda involves the use of variegated types of whole or chopped fruit, sugar syrup, and mustard essence; there are moreover single-fruit versions using the same recipe.
The Mantuan mostarda
Mantuan mostarda is typically made up of Campanine apples and quince. The fruits used are whole and preferably unripe, and the syrup consists of liquid sugar and mustard essence.
The Vicentina mostarda
The recipe for Vicentina mostarda uses quince pulp — and sometimes pear pulp — as a base, withal with sweet fruit, sugar, and mustard essential oil.
The mostarda of Bologna
Bolognese mostarda is very similar to a jam considering the fruit — mainly plums, pears, and quinces — is composite without stuff cooked with sugar, water, and lemon juice. Walnuts, sultanas, and mustard are then widow to the mixture.
Other mustards of the gastronomic tradition of Northern Italy include those of Forlì or Romagnola, that of Carpi, mostarda Veneta, and that of Piedmont. In Southern Italy, with variegated variations that involve the wing of ground almonds, walnuts, cinnamon, or chocolate, mostarda is prepared pursuit a recipe based on must and flour.
There are numerous ways to prepare fruit mustards; the one unelevated is from Cremona.
Mostarda di frutta
Instructions
- Place successive layers of fruit and sugar in a steel pot, then let it rest for 24 hours.
- Place the pot over medium heat and swash for 5 minutes. Turn off the heat and let it rest for 24 hours in a dry place. Do not imbricate the pot when humid or resting, to prevent condensation from dripping on the fruit.
- Boil for flipside 5 minutes and let it rest, as before, then repeat a third time and let it cool.
- Put 5 drops of mustard essential oil in preservation jars and fill them with the fruit and syrup, tropical tightly, and store in a visionless place. Allow the mustard to sit for a few days surpassing stuff used.
