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Drink

Mull Wine

A warm drink made by boiling spices with water, port wine, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Port wine and sugar work together. They rank in the top 24% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 805 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Mull Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mull

  1. Boil the spices in water until the flavor is extracted.

  2. Add the port wine and sugar to the pot.

  3. Boil the mixture together.

Serve

  1. Serve warm.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Port wine + sugartop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together805 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Port wine
Forms the liquid base and adds rich, fortified wine flavor.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the wine and spices.
Spices
Provide the aroma and warm flavor, released by simmering in water.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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