Our pantry is crammed with peculiar and precious condiments: plum vinegars, truffle oils, pomegranate molasses, and specialty Tabasco sauces, flavored with chipotle and habanero peppers.

Yet, somehow, we always manage to find recipes calling for something so recherché that even we don’t have it. This past weekend, we set out to make a mini Indian feast and found that several side dishes called for an item more commonly found in medicine cabinets than on pantry shelves: mustard seed oil.

If you’ve seen Dr. Singha’s Mustard Rub at the health food store, you’ll know that mustard seed oil is an ayurvedic remedy for sore muscles and jangled nerves. And Dr. Singha’s Mustard Bath is a popular way to detox.

But does mustard seed oil consumed internally have any health benefits? The bottle of cold pressed, spicy flavor mustard seed oil I bought at Whole Foods is “Rich in Omega 3 & 6, Cholesterol Free, for Better Healthy Cooking & Salads,” claims its manufacturer, an Australian company with the delightfully redundant name Naturally From Nature.

Naturally From Nature’s label trumpets the fact that mustard seed oil is high in polyunsaturated fats and contains only 5.5% saturated fat, among the lowest rates of any oil. Sounds great! And it’s tasty, too. So why aren’t more people cooking with it?

Maybe it’s because mustard seed oil is high in erucic acid, which the FDA deems unsafe for human consumption. But, according to Linda Bladholm, author of The Indian Grocery Store Demystified, “Since the mustard seed oil is heated before it is eaten, Indians believe that the erucic acid is burned off. This oil has been consumed for thousands of years, with seemingly no ill effects.”

Madhur Jaffrey, the undisputed queen of Indian cuisine, has this to say about mustard seed oil in her World Vegetarian cookbook, “It is also good for a massage! Because it has more ericic acid than recommended for Western diets, I have suggested extra-virgin olive oil as a substitute in many of the recipes.”

Whole Foods’ website discusses the issue of erucic acid in canola oil, which comes from the rapeseed plant, a close cousin to mustard (both belong to the brassica family). According to Whole Foods, “Rapeseed oil, as well as other unrefined vegetable oils, have been linked to increased rates of lung cancer in people breathing the cooking fumes, according to a 1995 Wall Street Journal article. Cooking at lower temperatures (so the oil does not produce smoke) is recommended and will prevent this risk.”

So mustard seed oil is apparently safe to use as long as you burn off the erucic acid, but don’t breathe in the fumes. Yikes. I’d like to use the stuff, because it’s got a nice, spicy bite, but now I’m not sure what to think. I guess we can always use the remaining 10 or so ounces as a massage oil. After all, few aromas are more alluring to Matt than the smell of a spicy vindaloo.