MUSTARD. The varieties of mustard-seed of commerce are produced from several species of the Cruciferous genus Brassica. Of these the principal are the Black or Brown Mustard, Brassica nigra (Sinapis nigra, I..), the White Mustard, Brassica alba, and the Sarepta Mustard, B. juncea. The finest qualities of Black and White Mustard are cultivated in the eastern counties of England. The former is a plant requiring a rich soil and much care in its treatment, but its seeds, which are very minute, weighing not more than one-fiftieth of a grain, are the most valuable for commercial purposes. The peculiar pungency and odour to which mustard owes much of its value are due to an essential oil developed by the action of water on two peculiar chemical substances contained in the black seed. These bodies are a compound termed by its discoverers myronate of potassium, but since called sinigrin, C 10 H 18 KNS 2 O 10 , and an albuminoid body, myrosin. The latter substance in presence of water acts as a ferment on sinigrin, splitting it up into the essential oil of mustard, a potassium salt, and sugar. It is worthy of remark that this reaction does not take place in presence of boiling water, and therefore it is not proper to use very hot water in the preparation of mustard. Essential oil of mustard is in chemical constitution an iso-sulphocyanate of allyl C 4 H 5 NS. It is prepared artificially by a process, discovered by Zinzin, which consists in treating bromide of allyl with sulphocyanate of ammonium and distilling the resultant sulphocyanate of allyl. The seed of White Mustard contains in place of sinigrin a peculiar principle called sinalbin, C 30 H 44 N 2 S 2 O 16 , in several aspects analogous to sinigrin. In presence of water it is acted upon by myrosin, present also in White ...Mustard, splitting it up into sulphocyanate of acrinyl, sulphate of sinapine, and sugar, Sulphocyanate of acrinyl is a powerful rubefacient principle, whence White Mustard, although yielding no volatile oil, forms a valuable material for cataplasms. The seeds of Brassica juncea have the same constitution and properties as Black Mustard, as a substitute for which they are extensively cultivated in Russia. The mustard-seed imported from the East Indies is also largely composed of B. juncea.
Both as a table condiment and as a medicinal substance, mustard has been known from a very remote period. Under the name of vατrυ it was used by Hippocrates in medicine. The form in which table mustard is now sold in the United Kingdom dates from 1720, about which time Mrs Clements of Durham hit on the idea of grinding the seed in a mill and sifting the flour from the husk. The bright -yellow farina thereby produced under the name of “Durham mustard” pleased the taste of George I., and rapidly attained wide popularity. As it is now prepared mustard consists essentially of a mixture of black and white farina in certain proportions. Several grades of pure mustard are made containing nothing but the farina of mustard-seed, the lower qualities having larger amounts of the white cheaper mustard; and corresponding grades of a mixed preparation of equal price, but containing certain proportions of wheaten or starch flour, are also prepared and sold as “mustard condiment.” The mixture is free from the unmitigated bitterness and sharpness of flavour of pure mustard, and it keeps much better.
All varieties of mustard-seed contain from 25 to 35 per cent, of a bland inodorous yellow-coloured fixed oil, free from pungency and with little tendency to become rancid. It is extensively used in India for cooking and all ordinary purposes, and is one of the ordinary commercial oils of Western countries. The mustard papers commonly used as rubefacients and vesicants are made from mustard flour entirely deprived of its fixed oil.
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σίναπι, Matt. xiii, 32; xvii, 20; Mark iv, 31; Luke xiii, 19; xvii, 6; a well known garden herb. Christ compares the kingdom of heaven to a grain of mustard seed, which a man took and sowed in the earth, which indeed,” said he, is the least of all seeds; but when it is grown is the greatest among herbs, and becometh a tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof,” Matt. xiii, 31, 32. This expression will not appear strange,” says Sir Thomas Browne, if we recollect that the mustard seed, though it be not simply and in itself the smallest of seeds, yet may be very well believed to be the smallest of such as are apt to grow unto a ligneous substance, and become a kind of tree.” The expression, also, that it might grow into such dimensions that birds might lodge on its branches, may be literally conceived, if we allow the luxuriancy of plants in India above our northern regions. And he quotes upon this occasion what is recorded in the Jewish story, of a mustard tree that was to be climbed like a fig tree. The Talmud also mentions one whose branches were so extensive as to cover a tent. Without insisting on the accuracy of this, we may gather from it that we should not judge of eastern vegetables by those which are familiar to ourselves. Scheuchzer describes a species of mustard which grows several feet high, with a tapering stalk, and spreads into many branches. Of this arborescent or treelike vegetable, he gives a print; and Linnæus mentions a species whose branches were real wood, which he names _sinapi erucoides_. But whatever kind of tree our Lord meant, it is clear, from the fact that he never takes his illustrations from any objects but such as were familiar, and often present in the scene around him, that he spoke of one ...which the Jews well knew to have minute seeds, and yet to be of so large growth as to afford shelter for the birds of the air.
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