Name: To Mull Wine. an Excellent French Recipe.
Ingredients: 1½ cups water; ¼ ounce cinnamon; ¼ ounce ginger, slightly bruised; ¼ ounce cloves; 3 ounces fine sugar; 1 pint port wine; 1-2 strips orange rind, cut extremely thin

Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

To Mull Wine. an Excellent French Recipe.

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

Boil 1½ cups of water with ¼ ounce each of cinnamon, bruised ginger, and cloves, along with 3 ounces of fine sugar until it forms a thick syrup. Ensure the syrup does not burn.

Finish and serve

Pour in 1 pint of port wine and stir gently until it is just about to boil.
Serve immediately, adding 1-2 strips of thinly cut orange rind for extra flavor.

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 + clovetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,189 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,380 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,038 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Cinnamon + orangetop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,437 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Ginger + orangetop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,833 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar: Sweetens the spiced syrup and helps it thicken as it boils down.
Port wine: Provides the main body and fruity, rich flavor of the drink.
Cinnamon: Adds warm, sweet spice aroma to the syrup.
Cloves: Adds strong aromatic spice that flavors the syrup.

The step that matters

Keep the syrup from burning. Sugar darkens and turns bitter once it scorches, and the burnt taste carries into the whole drink. Keeping the heat moderate and stirring as needed lets the spices infuse and the syrup thicken evenly.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cinnamon, ginger, clove, sugar, port wine):

Figfits about as well
Pearfits about as well
Orangethe original
Vanillafits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against cinnamon, ginger, clove, sugar, port wine. 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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To Mull Wine. an Excellent French Recipe.