Mustard oil is of vegetable origin and is obtained from seeds of the black and white mustard plants. In the crude state, black mustard oil (light colour) has a spicy odour and a pungent taste. When refined it is neutral in odour and taste. White mustard oil (yellow colour) has a bitingly pungent taste due to the allyl mustard oil it contains. In the crude state, mustard oil has a spicy odour. When refined, it is neutral in odour.
The production process involves several steps. Whole mustard seeds are ground; during the grinding, tap water is added to the seed and afterwards the slurry is incubated at 50°C for 30 minutes. The released oil is removed by steam distillation under reduced pressure during 90 minutes. Given that the resulting distillate contains both water and volatile mustard oil, the mustard oil is separated from the water by centrifugation and dried using sodium sulfate. Subsequently mustard oil is filtered and packed. Starting from 500 kg of mustard seed, 3.2 kg mustard oil is obtained given that mustard seeds contain typically 0.5 to 1% of volatile mustard oil.
Canola oil comes from the rape seed (canola seed), which is part of the mustard family of plants. It is not rape seed oil and is very different from it. Canola was developed using traditional plant breeding methods to remove undesirable qualities in rape seed. There is a lot of controversy on canola -whether its good or bad for health.