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[[File:Kapustowate EN.png|thumb|upright=1.3|left|Mustard plant's family relations. Can you imagine 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 with a very specific taste. But what taste is it exactly? The plant's Polish name, "''gorczyca''" suggests a bitter bitterness ("''gorzkigoryczka''") taste. But if you ground some with you teeth, chew a few seeds and you'd ll notice that they are actually sweetish and very piquant, but not exactly bitter. So where did the plant get its Polish name from? Most likely from the verb "''gorzeć''", "to burn"; apparently, as both bitterness and the taste of raw mustard seeds could be were formerly described as "a burning"sensation.
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".