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To Mull Ale

A warm ale beverage flavored with cloves, nutmeg, sugar, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

To Mull Ale

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the spiced ale

  1. Pour the ale into a saucepan.

  2. Add cloves, nutmeg, and sugar.

  3. Heat until boiling, then remove from heat to cool.

Make the egg mixture

  1. Beat the egg yolks and mix with a little cold ale.

  2. Combine the egg mixture with the warm ale.

  3. Pour the mixture in and out of the pan several times.

  4. Heat over a low fire until hot, repeating two or three times.

Serve

  1. Serve with dry toast.

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. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Nutmeg + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Nutmeg + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together23,364 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Clove + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together17,182 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Nutmeg and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 24,744 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the drink and give it a rich, creamy body when gently heated.
Ale
Forms the liquid base and carries the spices and sweetness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the bitterness of the strong ale.

The step that matters

Heat over a low fire until hot. Egg yolks thicken when heated gently but can scramble and curdle if the mixture gets too hot. Keep the heat low and avoid boiling once the eggs are added.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (nutmeg, sugar, egg):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against nutmeg, sugar, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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