Ṣināb (Mustard Sauce)

Supplemental Recipes

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Ingredients:

Vinegar, Mustard Seeds, Almonds, Salt, Honey

Take new mustard seeds, lightly pound them in a stone or wooden mortar to coarsely crush them, and wash them in hot water so that they lose their bitterness. Pour off the water, return the seeds to the mortar, and pound them thoroughly. Add sour vinegar to the seeds little by little [while pounding] and then press and mash them in a thick piece of cloth or a coarse woolen napkin. Press and mash them until the pulp looks like thin starchy batter.

Next, thoroughly pound skinned sweet almonds until they look pasty and press and mash them with the mustard to balance its sharp flavor, whiten it, thicken it, and sweeten its flavor. This is because almonds are moderately moist and deliciously sweet, and this is how they benefit and improve the mustard sauce. So, when the sauce is all finished following this recipe, it can be used with the grilled dishes and other foods that are rich and dense, God willing.

Anwāʿ al-ṣaydala fī alwān al-aṭʿima 116
Discussion

Both of our sources offer recipes for Ṣināb (called Khardal in the Muslim East,) Mustard Sauce, and recommend it in a variety of recipes both as a sauce for the dish and served alongside as a condiment. We are serving two different versions, one made with Pomegranate Vinegar served with the Mirqas and one made with Apple Cider Vinegar served with the Ahrash. Both use the same basic recipe of mustard seeds, almonds and vinegar presented in both FKH and AS. As my almonds do not appear to be as deliciously sweet as AS expresses, I have balanced it with a little bit of honey.

Rather than using a mortar and pestle, I relied on my trusty food processor. My goal is to make these foods accessible to both cook and table, and I find that using that particular hand tool almost never makes a good trade of effort for results. The trick to making this work is to wet the Mustard Seeds with only enough Vinegar to cause the blades of the food processor to crush them, rather than send them flying around. The addition of the almonds from the start, as in FKH, also helps with this. Like the source recipes recommend, I strained the mixture each time it became too thin, then returned the mustard-almond paste to grinding and adding more vinegar. The amounts below are what I used in total and I combined all of the batches into a single sauce as recommended. Almond slivers from the baking aisle of your local grocery are probably the easiest source of raw, skinned almonds in the U.S. if you have trouble finding them – that is what I used.

References

FKH X.1.1, AS p. 232

Modernized Recipe
7 oz.Black Mustard Seeds
14 oz.Almonds, skinned
3 c.Vinegar of choice
2 T.Salt
2 T.Honey
Yield: 2 cups
  • Boil 2 quarts of water and soak the mustard seeds in it overnight
  • Drain the Mustard Seeds and add them and the Almonds to your food processor
  • Set the food processor to run until the Almonds and Mustard Seeds have made a paste
  • Allow it to continue running while slowly pouring the Vinegar into the bowl, allowing the processor to run several seconds after each addition
  • Once the mixture becomes too thin to continue pulverizing it in the machine, strain this mixture into a bowl
  • Return the strained paste to the food processor, and continue adding vinegar
  • Repeat this process until all of the vinegar has been used
  • Discard any remaining Mustard-Almond paste from the last straining
  • Add the Salt and Honey to the sauce. I recommend adding half to begin, and more to taste as needed to suit your use
Process Photos