What's worse, the French "Maille" variety of mustard is somewhat mild and boring even in France, and getting mustard that tastes like the 'Amora Fine & Forte' (available in almost every grocery store in France) anywhere in the US is damn near impossible.
I recently moved back to the US after living in France for nearly a decade. I bought some Maille Dijon mustard thinking it would taste the same...boy was I wrong. I was disgusted, it tasted nothing like what I had in France. Would the recipe change per country? I checked the label and it seems that it was fabricated here in the US, so perhaps that has something to do with it?
Mustard snobs would point out that Maille doesn't deserve it's heritage mystique as they haven't used mustard seeds from their historical home of Burgundy for many years. They are all imported from Canada, probably coinciding with the purchase by Unilever(?).
I'll have to look for that! But then we are picky when it comes to mustard, Maille for example is usually rather easy to find in Germany but completely unacceptable on the dinner table! What can I say...
> Pommery moutarde de meaux: Truly excellent. You can put it on something as simple as a sandwich and elevate it, or you can put it on grilled meats like lamb or veal. This is the Rolls Royce of mustard.
This is a whole grain mustard and imo far better than maille.
I am visiting my parents in France at the moment and can confirm the shortage of plain mustard. Flavored ones are readily available, as are fancier brands like Pommery (generally better known for its Moutarde de Meaux.
Ironically and paradoxically, Dijon mustard can be found in neighboring countries, because non-French people don't eat as much of the stuff. In France the minute any inventory shows up anywhere it's immediately depleted, whereas in other countries it can remain on shelves for weeks.
Changing the allotment between France and other countries for exporting firms takes time, and so it does happen that more mustard is sent to countries that don't much care for it, while the French are deprived of it.
English mustard is great. I'd say export it to Europe, but no one will like it because they consider French (and some, German) mustards superior. It's the cheese and sausage situation all over again :D
Who cares about Dijon? It's about the mustard. In the supermarkets around here (Germany) it's hard to get Dijon mustard. In 100% of the time it's the Maille brand that can be seen in the header image of the BBC article. However it contains preservatives and I don't see why mustard needs to contain preservatives. By chance I discovered that Löwensenf is the same as Dijon mustard without preservatives, available everywhere and cheap.
The only French mustard that has a legal certification (an "IGP", meaning "Certified Geographic Origin") is the "Moutarde de Bourgogne". It's made with wine while the Dijon mustard uses vinegar. And the latter (Dijon's recipe) imports most of the mustard seeds used in its mustard, while the "Moutarde de Bourgogne" has to use locally produced seeds.
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moutarde_de_Bourgogne
By the way, mustard was a very important condiment in France for many centuries. But out of the 8 French idioms listed in a 150 years old dictionary, only one is still used nowadays.
https://www.littre.org/definition/moutarde
And as incredible as it may sound, the "moutarde de Bourgogne" IGP, which wants to be a "quality" label, does not seem to forbid those crap (and as a result looking at random samples, they all have preservatives)
My quick review from mustard here in France is that if you want to avoid those preservatives you should choose an organic (Bio) mustard, which seems to be the only ones without useless ingredients (despite the fact that it probably has nothing to do with being Bio)
Dijon mustard is quite spicy though, but it's that "up to the nose" spiciness. Eastern European mustards are usually milder and what I had in north is more spicy in the traditional sense.
One thing that I find surprising in France, is how little variety there is in mustard in most supermarkets. Basically you have a choice of dijon mustard from 20 different brands that all taste the same and then some "old fashioned" ones.
I went to a Sunday Dinner Club dinner in Chicago a few years ago and had a cassoulet with what I think was a mustard drawn from the mustard grinder tap at the (late lamented) cheese shop Pastoral. I'm 90% sure it was a Maille. It was so hot you couldn't taste it without your sinuses lighting on fire; far, far hotter than horseradish wasabi.
I've gone through dozens of different mustards since trying to find it and have never succeeded. It's my white whale.
We've gotten close by mixing up mustards in our kitchen (spicy Asian mustards get close). But then the texture is off, and it's not balanced.
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