It’s sweet, spicy and funny at Wisconsin’s National Mustard Museum
By Tom Adkinson
February 2, 2024

MADISON, Wisc. – The University of Wisconsin isn’t the only institution of higher learning in Wisconsin’s capital city. Poupon U. makes its mark on the community, too – usually a yellow one that’s difficult to remove from light-colored clothing.

Poupon U. is an outgrowth of one of America’s delightfully quirky museums, the National Mustard Museum.

Its founder and curator, Barry Levenson, left a successful law career (he was Wisconsin’s assistant attorney general and once argued a case in the U.S. Supreme Court with a small jar of mustard in his pants pocket) to amass a collection of approximately 6,700 varieties of mustards. They came from all 50 states and 70 countries.

The free museum, located in a suburban retail area, explores the worldwide popularity of the colorful condiment in a style that is entertaining and informative.

(Did you know that William Shakespeare wrote mustard references into four of his plays, or that “too old to cut the mustard” is a reference to how difficult it was centuries ago to harvest mustard plants with a hand scythe?)

The tiny seeds of the National Mustard Museum were planted in 1986, when Levenson was in a funk after his beloved Boston Red Sox had lost the World Series.

As he told The Wisconsin State Journal, he was wandering the aisles of a grocery store when he decided he needed a hobby. He told the newspaper that as he was passing the mustards, he heard a voice saying, “If you collect us, they will come.”

He was hooked. The yellow stuff consumed him, and vice versa. He opened the museum and related mustard store in 1992 and has been squirting out humor and trivial information ever since.

(Did you know that Canada – specifically Alberta and Saskatchewan – is the biggest exporter of mustard seeds, or that the United States is the world’s biggest consumer of mustard?)

Levenson, himself a master of promotion, gets help from other condiment connoisseurs, including Allan Mustard. That’s a real person, and he really was the U.S. ambassador to Turkmenistan.

With a completely straight face, Ambassador Mustard delivers an endorsement of Poupon U. in which he coaches prospective students what to include in a multi-mustard university backpack. Yes, do pack some hotdogs.

Ambassador Mustard’s support of Poupon U. is part of a YouTube video on the museum’s website that promotes the museum’s biggest annual event, National Mustard Day, the first Saturday of August.

A recent addition to National Mustard Day is Razzle Dazzle, a mustard-accented flavor from Madison’s Chocolate Shoppe Ice Cream Co.

“Mrs. Mustard” (Levenson’s wife, Patti) described it as “a delicious mustardy base with raspberry honey mustard pretzel dip” and “chocolate pieces (that) give it the finishing touch.” The Chocolate Shoppe makes it only one day a year.

By now, you’ve figured out that the National Mustard Museum doesn’t take itself too seriously, making it all the easier for you to taste some samples at the mustard bar, buy the museum’s book for kids (“Mustard on a Pickle”) and be proud to wear a museum t-shirt. Among the textile messages:

• Squeeze the Day – Carpe Dijon
• What the World Needs Now is Mustard, Sweet Mustard
• Friends Don’t Let Friends Eat Ketchup

Speaking of ketchup, Levenson quotes the annual report of the non-existent National Condiment Research Council with this condemnation of the red stuff: “Ketchup is now the leading cause of childhood stupidity.”

Trip-planning resources: MustardMuseum.org, VisitMadison.com and Michigan.org