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[[File:Kapustowate EN.png|thumb|upright=1.3|left|ustard plant's family relations. It's actually hard to imagine modern cuisine without the cabbage family.]]
The mustard plant, which looks quite similar to rapeseed (or what North Americans call "Canolacanola") 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".
Mustard seeds come in three varieties: white, brown and black. In fact, the brown and black ones are more closely related to cabbage that to the white mustard, but let's leave the botanical taxonomy aside and just continue to refer to all three as "mustard".
But wait, what did he mean by "tree"? Mustard is an annual plant, it doesn't grow more than 60 cm tall. Did Jesus get confused or was he misquoted by Luke or mistranslated by Bible scholars?
Anyway, ancient Romans found out that mustard seeds' sharp taste may be somewhat blunted by mixing them with sour-tasting grape must. They called this mixture "burning must", or "''mustum ardens''" in Latin, which, as you may have guessed, is where the "mustard" comes from. This condiment survived the fall of the Roman Empire and was quite commonplace in medieval Europe. By that time, however, the must would have been usually replaced with either verjuice (unripe grape juice) or vinegar (although the famous Dijon mustard, for example, still has some white wine added to it). The fact that mustard was common known throughout Europe doesn't mean that medieval Europeans didn't have their stereotypes about specific nations' supposed love for the condiment. One such stereotyope was best illustrated by Eustache Deschamp, a 15th-century pioneer of French culinary chauvinism who didn't care for any food outside the borders of France.
Tak czy siak, starożytni Rzymianie wymyślili, że ostry smak gorczycy można nieco złagodzić mieszając go z kwaśnym moszczem winnym. Mieszankę tę nazywali „palącym moszczem”, czyli „''mustum ardens''”, z czego, jak łatwo się domyślić, pochodzi słowo „musztarda”. Przyprawa ta przyjęła się na tyle, że przetrwała nawet upadek Imperium Rzymskiego i w średniowiecznej Europie była na porządku dziennym, z tym że moszcz winny coraz częściej zastępowano sokiem z niedojrzałych winogron albo – tak jak dzisiaj – octem (choć np. słynną musztardę z Dijon nadal robi z białego wina). Co nie znaczy, że średniowieczni Europejczycy nie mieli swoich stereotypów na temat tego, które narody kochają musztardę bardziej niż inne, czego najlepszym przykładem jest wiersz Eustachego Deschamps, XIV-wiecznego prekursora francuskiego szowinizmu kulinarnego, któremu nie smakowało nic poza granicami Francji. [[Wierzynek_–_pierwszy_polski_restaurator?#Dodanie_do_dania|Jego niezbyt pochlebny opis kuchni czeskiej]] już kiedyś cytowałem, teraz pora na wiersz o gastronomii belgijskiej (ten też w moim przekładzie).