What is the origin of mustard?
It seems that this word first appeared as a surname before 1200. The condiment, originally prepared by making the ground seeds of certain cruciferous plants into a paste with must (crushed grapes not yet fermented; from Latin mustum ‘new wine’), was mostarde, moustarde in French (and as the mustard plant, moutarde) and had various forms in Anglo-Norman (mustarde, mustard, mostart, moustard). Since c. 1223, we have known it as a condiment made with crushed mustard grains. The herbs of the family that are called mustard are a species of Brassica native to Europe and western Asia. The most commercially important are the black mustard (B. nigra) and white mustard (B. alba). These are yellow-flowered annuals naturalized in the United States; the black mustard can often be found as a weed infesting grain fields, as is the charlock, or wild mustard (B. arvensis).
