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== Mustard, “an Uncommon Condiment” ==
Let's start with mustard, a condiment of a truly ancient pedigree. If you take a jar of mustard from your fridge and read the list of ingredients on the label, you'll see it's made mostly of mustard seeds, vinegar, salt and sugar. The composition is so simple you could quite easily make your own mustard at home (more about it later). What's more, the list of ingredients has remained pretty much unchanged for centuries. The crucial ingredient Mustard seeds are, of course, the mustard seedskey ingredient, so let's begin with first say few words about them.
[[File:Kapustowate EN.png|thumb|upright=1.3|left|Mustard plant's family relations. It's actually hard to Can you imagine modern cuisine living without the cabbage family.?]]
The mustard plant, which looks quite similar to rapeseed (or what North Americans call "canola") with its bright-yellow flowers, produces seeds which have a very specific taste. But taste is it exactly? The plant's Polish name, "''gorczyca''" suggests a bitter ("''gorzki''") taste. But if you ground some with you teeth, you'd notice that they are actually sweetish and very piquant, but not exactly bitter. So did the plant get its Polish name from? Most likely from the verb "''gorzeć''", "to burn", as both bitterness and the taste of raw mustard seeds could be described as "burning".