Name: To Mull Wine
Ingredients: ¼ cup water; 1 pint port wine; cinnamon (to taste); grated nutmeg (to taste); cloves (to taste); mace (to taste); sugar (to taste); lemon or orange juice (optional); thin slices of toast or rusks (for serving)

Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

To Mull Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Boil the spices in water.
Add port wine and sugar to the spice mixture and mix well.
Serve hot with toast or rusks.
Optionally, add lemon or orange juice.
Strain the spices.

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.

Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11,917 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,189 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,686 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,557 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11,318 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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 gives the drink its rich, fortified body and fruity flavour.
Sugar: Adds sweetness that balances the spices and the tannins of the wine.
Cinnamon: Contributes warm, aromatic flavour that defines the spiced character of the drink.
Cloves: Adds strong, pungent aroma and warm spice notes to the mulled wine.
Nutmeg: Adds a warm, sweet aroma that rounds out the spice blend.
Mace: Adds a delicate, warm aroma similar to nutmeg but with a lighter, more floral note.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (port wine, cinnamon, nutmeg, clove, mace, sugar):

Figfits better
Applefits better
Vanillafits better
Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against port wine, cinnamon, nutmeg, clove, mace, sugar. 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.