Another commonplace sauce:
Recipe #12 Von ainem guoten seniff
Of a good mustard
Item for a good mustard, take mustardseed and clean it and pound it finely and force it through a cloth that is closely woven. And pound cinnamon flower (i.e. dried buds), mix it with that (mustardseed) and stir the mustard with thick honey (hoenig samen), (stirred) together properly like a spoon dish. And if you wish to ready it, take a little and mix it with wine. That way you have a good mustard.
This recipe is very close to another one in Cgm 384, so between the two we get a reasonable idea of what this sauce was supposed to look like. I can recommend the combination of mustard, honey, and cinnamnon, but recommend adding just a little salt to bring out the aromas.
One of the most extensive and interesting medieval recipe collections in German is a manuscript dated 1460 and ascribed to one Meister Hans, cook at the Wurttemberg court. It was often treated as a solitary, the work of a single cook, but there are too many parallels with contemporary manuscripts from Southern Germany to make this plausible. The recipes are an eclectic mix, many terse and simple, others detailed and sprinkled with anecdotes. The entire text was newly edited and extensively commented for Tupperware Deutschland by Trude Ehlert: Maister Hansen des von Wirtenberg Koch, Frankfurt (Main) 1996.
Where would you find cinnamon buds? I figure ground cinnamon could be subbed, but it’d be nice to have the right stuff to play with.
I get them at spice shops because they are still used in traditional German cooking. AFAIK they are also used in some Chinese recipes, so any shop catering to that demographic may carry them. But it was not easy for me either – I try to lay in a store over Christmas, when they tend to be available