‘Making mustard isn’t as easy as it looks, dearie’

…So said English Queen Victoria, who in 1886 issued a “royal warrant” to Jeremiah James Colman proclaiming that Colman’s was hereby “the official mustard manufacturer to Her Majesty the Queen Victoria.”

 

Talk about a marketing coup. If there were a “mustard maker’s hall of fame,” Jeremiah James Colman would definitely qualify for enshrinement, given his many contributions to put Colman’s Mustard of Norwich in Norfolk County, England, on the world map. 

In 1851, at age 21, Jeremiah James Colman took the reins of the family business that was founded in 1814 by his by great uncle, “Old Jeremiah” Colman.

 

Jeremiah James Colman the younger

Young Jeremiah guided the company for more than 45 years. He proved to be a crackerjack innovator whose masterstrokes included creating Colman’s famous bull’s head trademark in 1855. 

Colman also standardized the bright yellow packaging with the distinctive red and black lettering.

 

Most importantly, Colman carried on the family’s cradle-to-grave ethos, providing education, housing, health care and leisure activities as well as savings and pension plans for workers and their dependents. 

“Colman’s was a family,” one retiree said. “If you had to go to the hospital, they had their own ambulance. That was the type of company it was.” 

Colman also had a great sense of civic responsibility. He once stated:  

“Men should go into municipal affairs to see what they could do for the town, instead of seeing what the town could do for them.” 

Colman died in 1898 at age 68. “His funeral procession numbered 1,200 people, which is perhaps the greatest indication of how important Jeremiah James Colman was to so many people in 19th century Norwich,” said Wayne Kett of the Tide and Time Museum in Great Yarmouth within Norfolk County. 

Others in the family stepped up and saw to it that the Colman’s Mustard business would carry on into the 20th century with great flair and a playful sense of humor. 

London advertising executive Samuel Herbert Benson earned the Colman account, and a long-standing relationship ensued. One of the most famous campaigns to ever come out of Benson’s agency was launched in 1926 for Colman’s – The Mustard Club.

 

The architect was Dorothy Leigh Sayers, who became a famous mystery novelist. The British press heaped praise on Benson’s for its pioneering work in “guerrilla marketing.” (That is an unattractive term used to describe “brilliant maneuvers that employ creative, novel or unconventional methods in order to boost sales or attract interest in a brand or business.”) 

Posters asked: ‘Has Father Joined the Mustard Club?” Mustard Club meetings occur “wherever a few people are mustered together at dinner,” using the hushed secret password “Pass the Mustard, please.” 

A series of characters was created by Sayers, each associated with mustard or its application – the Baron de Beef, Miss Di Gester, Lord Bacon, Augustus Gusto, Signior Spaghetti, Lady Hearty and Master Mustard. 

There were card games, a club newsletter and recipe books. Mustard Club members could request an identification badge. More than 500,000 badges were issued by 1933. 

 

‘Mustard Club’ once hoped to reform curmudgeons 

Naturally, there was a set of rules for “The Mustard Club.” 

Anna Jordan, author of “The Good Cook’s Book of Mustard,” said that the club “inspired a zaniness, a sort of goofy pursuit of mustard obsession.” 

Here are the abridged but official club rules: 

1. Every Member shall on all proper occasions eat mustard to improve appetite and strengthen digestion. 

2. Every Member shall once at least during every meal place the mustard-pot six inches from his/her neighbour’s plate. 

3. Every Member who asks for a sandwich and finds that it has no mustard shall publicly refuse to eat the same. 

4. Every Member shall see that the mustard is freshly made, and no Member shall tip a waiter who forgets to put mustard on the table. 

5. Each Member shall instruct his children…in forming the habit of eating mustard. 

The stated purpose of the club was to “enroll all grumblers and curmudgeons and other such persons who by omitting the use of mustard have suffered in their digestion, and to bring such persons to a joyous frame of mind by the consumption of liberal portions of mustard.” 

Additionally, the club encouraged “the use of mustard, not only with beef and bacon, but to show how it improves the flavour of mutton, fish, cheese and macaroni.” 

The adventures of The Mustard Club drifted away in 1933, under the weight of the Great Depression, but Colman’s mustard continued as a world market leader. Its advertising also continued to delight mustard aficionados. 

One of the favorite Colman television commercials in the 1980s featured a group of upper class Brits having a picnic on a French beach only to find that the butler has forgotten the Colman’s. “Damn long swim back to England,” says one of the party, as the butler begins to wade into the water. 

One entire section of the National Mustard Museum in Middleton, Wis. (near Madison), features artifacts from Colman’s Mustard. It’s a fun place to visit. Admission is free, but “no ketchup allowed.” 

Curator Barry Levenson started collecting mustard jars in 1986, a self-prescribed therapy to get his mind off baseball. His beloved Boston Red Sox lost the World Series to the New York Mets, four games to three. Levenson said he was crushed by the defeat.

 

Unable to sleep, he aimlessly entered a 24-hour grocery store. “I just roamed up and down the aisles, pushing an empty cart, tears coming down my cheeks,” Levenson told Michael Clair, a writer for Major League Baseball. “I said, ‘This is crazy. I need a hobby. I need to collect something.’” 

Clair said that among the condiments, Levenson paused. “All the ketchups, relishes, mayos and hot sauces stared at him. But only one called to him deep in his soul.” 

“In front of the mustards,” Levenson said, “I heard a voice say, ‘If you collect us, they will come.’ I did, and they have.” 

His play on words comes from the 1989 baseball movie, “Field of Dreams,” when farmer Ray Kinsella (played by Kevin Costner) hears a voice whispering: “If you build it, he will come.” The character interprets this as an instruction to build a baseball diamond in his cornfield. 

When he does, Joseph Jefferson Jackson, nicknamed “Shoeless Joe,” and other dead baseball players emerge from the rows of corn to play ball.