Dijon mustard

The full story

As early as the Middle Ages, Burgundian mustard travelled all the way to the royal table. In 1354, the receiver general of Burgundy bought sénevé, the mustard seed, and vinegar to make it, then sent four barrels to King John and Queen Jeanne de Boulogne. In 1634, the statutes of Dijon’s vinegar and mustard makers reserved its manufacture for them and required every pot to bear its maker’s name. Their guild placed itself under the protection of Saint Vincent, patron saint of winegrowers, and took as its arms a silver funnel on a blue field.

Until the 19th century, mustard came from small workshops. The worker turned a small stone millstone by hand with a long pole fixed to the ceiling, poured the liquid into the centre, collected the paste in a wooden tub, then passed it through a horsehair sieve to remove the bran, the husks of the seeds. He produced 17 to 18 kilos a day. The verjuice adopted by Jean Naigeon gave Burgundy mustard its character; Naigeon even claimed to hold a secret for keeping it. When phylloxera destroyed the vines that gave these unripe grapes, at the end of the 19th century, mustard makers turned to small, sharp white wines from the region.

Then the industry changed scale. Rewarded in Dijon as early as 1843, then in Paris in 1849 and in London in 1855, the mustard maker Grey became supplier to the Emperor in 1860. After his machine, he replaced human strength with a horse. A count quoted in the specification for the protected label lists 150 manufacturers in the city of Dijon alone between 1750 and 1984. Their stoneware pots, which displayed the brand and its medals like a newspaper page, are now sought after by collectors.

The city’s name, however, slipped away from Dijon. In 1926 and again in 1929, the courts refused to reserve the name “Dijon mustard” for the region’s makers, because it describes a way of making mustard, not a place of origin: the 1937 decree drew the consequences. The seed itself nearly vanished from the fields. Grown in Burgundy until the Second World War, sometimes in charcoal burners’ clearings, rich in potash after the firing of charcoal, it then declined, notably in the face of Canadian competition. Manufacturers worked to bring it back from 1989: by 2003 it covered 1,230 hectares. Today the Moutarde de Bourgogne protected label requires Burgundian seeds and a Burgundy appellation white wine.

Only four mustard makers remain in Dijon today. On Rue de la Liberté, the shop of the Maille house, whose first mustards date from 1747, has been open since 1845.