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Drink

Mulled Cider

A warm beverage made by heating sweet cider with flour, water, sugar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Mulled Cider

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Heat the sweet cider in a pot.

  2. In a small bowl, mix the flour with a little water until smooth.

Mull and serve

  1. Add the flour mixture to the heated cider and stir well.

  2. Sweeten and spice the cider to your taste.

  3. Serve the mulled cider hot.

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. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Cider + sugartop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,308 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Cider + flourtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together812 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet cider
Forms the base liquid and provides most of the fruity flavor.
Flour
Starch thickens the cider slightly, giving it more body.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the tartness of the cider.
Spices
Add warm aroma and flavor to the cider.

The step that matters

Add the flour mixture to the hot cider and stir well. Flour must be fully dispersed in a smooth slurry before it goes in, because starch clumps when it hits hot liquid unmixed. Stirring well spreads the starch evenly so the cider thickens smoothly without lumps.

“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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