FRENCH, _Moutarde_; German, _Senf_; Portuguese, _Mustarda_; Spanish, _Maszaza_.
The mustard of commerce is the seed, whole or powdered, of the several species of the genus brassica (or sinapis) of the mustard family. They are (cruciferous) plants which grow wild, or cinnamon charlock, and are cultivated under various conditions.
Mustard dates back through a number of centuries, and the mustard tree, spoken of in Luke XIII, 19, which attains a height of ten or even fifteen feet in Palestine, was probably the true mustard, brassica (sinapis) nigra, according to Ragle and others. The tree meant is Salvadora Persica, a small tree bearing minute berries with pungent seeds which bear the name in Arabic of mustard. Hippocrates used it in medicine under the name of vanuit.
In the time of Queen Elizabeth, the Dutch were employed to throw out the earth from the eighty-foot dyke to drain the farms of Lincolnshire, Norfolk, and Cambridgeshire, which were covered with water and had been the habitation of wild fowls. This dirt was found to contain small brown seeds which, on being exposed to the sun and air, sprouted and grew into plants, producing a yellow blossom which proved to be mustard.
The two common varieties are the black or brown mustard, known as (brassica sinapis nigra), and the white seed, as it is called, although of a yellow color (brassica sinapis alba), usually found in whole mixed spices. The Indian wild brown mustard seed (rai or charlock juncea Sarepta brassica), taking the name Sarepta from the city of that name in Russia, in the government of Saratov, is sometimes offered as the black mustard. Sinapis glauca and sinapis ramosa yield a white seed found in South Russia and in the steppes northeast of the Caspian Sea. Mustard is known by every farmer and is an annual herb (see illustration), from three to six feet high, with lyrate leaves, yellowish flower, and slender pods containing round seed; it may be grown almost anywhere.
As only a few kinds of mustard seed are known to commerce, we will confine our history principally to the black seed, which is yellow within (brassica nigra), and which furnishes the most aroma. The seeds are very small and do not weigh more than one-fiftieth of a grain, while the seed of brassica alba, or the white seed, as it is called, is three times as large as the black.