Skip to main content
Drink

Mulled Cider

A warm beverage made by boiling cider with cloves, then mixing with beaten eggs and sugar, served hot with nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Mulled Cider

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a pot, boil the cider with the whole cloves.

  2. In a large pitcher, beat the eggs thoroughly and add sugar to make it very sweet.

Combine and froth

  1. Once the cider boils, pour it over the eggs.

  2. Pour the mixture back and forth between pitchers until well frothed.

Serve

  1. Serve in hot glasses with a grating of nutmeg on top.

  2. Strain out the cloves before serving.

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. Cider + clovetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,683 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Egg + nutmegtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Sugar + nutmegtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together23,364 recipes

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

  5. Cider + nutmegtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together884 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

Egg and nutmeg 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

Cider
Forms the hot liquid base and carries most of the flavour.
Eggs
Thicken the drink and create a light, frothy texture when poured between pitchers.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the tartness of the cider.
Whole cloves
Infuse warm, spiced aroma into the hot cider.

The step that matters

Pouring the boiling cider over the eggs. Eggs thicken and can scramble when exposed to very hot liquid. Beating the eggs well first and adding the hot cider gradually helps them blend smoothly instead of setting in lumps.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Clovethe original
  4. Cardamomfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against cider, egg, sugar, nutmeg. 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.

You might also like

Apple CiderApple Cider11 recipesVegetable SoupVegetable Soup350 recipesRaspberry VinegarRaspberry Vinegar214 recipesBrown Coffee with EggBrown Coffee with Egg175 recipes