Name: Wine Negus
Ingredients: 1 glass port wine; 2-3 pieces loaf sugar; 1 cup boiling water

Why it works: Port wine and sugar work together. They rank in the top 24% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 805 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Wine Negus

Ingredients

1 glass port wine
2-3 pieces loaf sugar
1 cup boiling water

Directions

In a tumbler, combine the port wine and loaf sugar.
Pour the boiling water over the mixture and stir until the sugar is dissolved.

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.

Port wine + sugartop 24% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together805 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Port wine: Provides the main flavour and body, with fruity sweetness that defines the drink.
Loaf sugar: Adds sweetness and dissolves into the drink to balance the wine's tannins.

“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.