Name: Mulled Cider
Ingredients: 1 quart cider; 6 cloves; 12 allspice berries; 1 stick cinnamon, broken into bits; ¼ nutmeg, broken into pieces; sugar (to taste); lemon juice (to taste)

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 ↓

Mulled Cider

Ingredients

Directions

Heat the cider in a pot.
Add the cloves, allspice, broken cinnamon, and nutmeg.
If the cider is too tart, add sugar.
If it is too sweet, add lemon juice.

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).
Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,189 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,874 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,536 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,331 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Cider: Forms the liquid base and carries the flavour of the spices.
Cloves: Adds a warm, pungent aroma that infuses into the hot cider.
Allspice berries: Contributes warm, peppery aroma that blends cinnamon and clove notes.
Cinnamon: Releases sweet, woody aroma into the hot liquid as it steeps.
Nutmeg: Adds a warm, sweet aroma that rounds out the spice blend.
Sugar: Adds sweetness to balance tartness in the cider.

Swap the lemon

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

Figfits better
Applefits better
Orangefits better
Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cider, clove, allspice, cinnamon, nutmeg, 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.