It left its mark on the oldest Mediterranean cultures. The Egyptians, Greeks and Romans already used it to enhance meat and fish dishes by grinding the seed and mixing it with food.

The use of table mustard was most likely imported to Gaul by the Romans. Later in history, the good King Charlemagne recommended cultivating this spice in all his general estates as well as in the gardens bordering monasteries in the suburbs of Paris. Mustard cultivation gradually spread to Germany and then to England. In northern Europe, there was a belief that you should spread a few mustard seeds around your house to chase away evil spirits...

It appears in Spain with the arrival of the Roman legions, then in India carried by Vasco da Gama. In 1390, its making was regulated and anyone who was making bad mustard was immediately subject to heavy fines. In big cities, itinerant merchants, called "criers", went door to door to sell this mustard under the name "sauces and spices from hell". The apothecaries of the time apparently made a fortune by preparing a clever mixture composed of mustard seeds, ginger and mint that husbands offered to their wives in order to awaken their libido.

Two centuries later, the corporation of vinegar and mustard makers in the city of Dijon was born. Their imagination allowed the different names that we know today. The golden age of spices was the renaissance, with mustard being part of all banquets (Rabelais made a big deal of it!). Over the centuries, it became more and more synonymous with refinement and pleasure: this is how fine and aromatic mustards appeared.

At the beginning of the 19th century, manufacturers engaged in a limitless race to compete in imagination by developing a multitude of new recipes, greatly encouraged by great gastronomes such as Grimod de la Reynière, Carème, Brillat-Savarin and even Monselet. Then manufacturing techniques evolved with the industrial revolution. The artisanal technique gradually disappears to make way for mechanization: a machine grinds, sifts and crushes the seed. Then from the manufacturing workshop, we quickly move on to the factory stage.

In the 20th century, regulations became increasingly strict, such as the 1937 decree which defined the conditions for manufacturing and naming mustards. Regulations completed and updated in July 2000 specify the designations.