67. Sweet Hot Mister Mustard
Currently made in Passaic New Jersey, Paul Fischer bought the Mister Mustard brand from Durkee three decades ago. Interestingly, the original recipe goes back to Jacob Frank of Frank’s Red Hot sauce fame who dined out with his own mustard pot just like King Louis XI of France. Regional mid-market mustards inspire fierce loyalty in the midwest and east and have managed to hold on to some of the ever shrinking shelf space in the major grocery chains. Keep up the good fight mustard heads!
Probably the best known brand from Oregon’s Beaverton Foods, Inglehoffer goes after true mustard heads with a variety of mustards sold in small fetish type jars. The company was started by Rose Biggi, an Italian immigrant who exploited the excellent local horseradish grown in beaver dam soil. Inglehoffer is a made up name; the lower-brow Beaver brand has some excellent mustards as well. Current president George Biggi is a no nonsense 80 year old badass who still has plenty of mustard on his fastball. Rose would be proud.
More honey than mustard, “uniquely sharp” it ain’t. Probably better used as a glaze or to impress a dainty mother-in-law. Bees carry an electrostatic charge that is used in pollination. Honey pot has a myriad of meanings from sexual to scatalogical to technological. Egyptians used honey for embalming purposes. Made in Canada.
Owned by Unilever, but still classy and good. Developed by condiment genius Antoine-Claude Maille back in 1747, the Dijon area had already been famous for its mustards for centuries. The French Pope Paul XXII added a “moutardier” to the Vatican payroll. The American version is made in Canada; the old Dijon factory will close in 2009 to the tears of many.
True mustard heads prefer the superfine dry powder which has countless medicinal uses as well as in the home and garden. Cultivated in India circa 3000 BC, mustard came to Britain with the Romans. Colman’s uses both brown and white mustard, the former for the heat and the latter for flavor. Tumeric is often an ingredient of but not essential to prepared mustards. Queen Victoria loved Colman’s slathered on her roast beef. Burp.
The first baby boomer foodie phenomenon. Somewhat inferior after Kraft bought the brand in 1982. The US version was never manufactured in France and uses Canadian mustard seed. After the invasion of Iraq, a Republican representative announced on the floor of Congress that he had removed Grey Poupon from his cupboard to protest French foreign policy. Perhaps prematurely, Grey Poupon launched, then pulled, a bright yellow “American” mustard back in 2000.
“Classic” has been added to the label to reinforce the obvious. The bright yellow color is to be found nowhere in nature. The winner of Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest receives the Mustard Belt. Old people often recall eating mustard sandwiches during the depression. Unlike ketchup and mayo, the squeeze bottle is an improvement.