Cut the Mustard

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EVERYDAY PHRASE
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"Cut The Mustard"

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DEFINITION
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To achieve an acceptable standard.

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BELIEVED ORIGIN
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This expression appears to have come from a cowboy expression
- "the proper mustard", meaning "the genuine thing", and the
resulting use of "mustard" to denote the best of anything.
O. Henry in Cabbages and Kings (1894) called mustard "the main
attraction" and it was also recorded in an O. Henry story in
1902 - "So I looked around and found a proposition (a woman)
that exactly cut the mustard".