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Dessert

White-wine Negus

A fruit preserve made with lemon, calf's foot jelly, spices, and white wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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 ↓

White-wine Negus

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lemons

  1. Extract juice from the lemon peel by rubbing loaf sugar on it or by cutting the peel thin and pounding it in a mortar.

  2. Cut the lemons into thin slices.

Make the negus

  1. In a jug, combine the lemon slices, calf's foot jelly, and small amounts of cinnamon, mace, cloves, and allspice.

  2. Pour 1 quart of boiling water over the mixture and cover the jug tightly.

  3. Let it stand for 15 minutes.

  4. Add a bottle of boiling white wine and grate in half a nutmeg.

  5. Stir well and sweeten to taste.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. 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

Calf's foot jelly
Adds body and gelatin-based richness that gives the drink a smooth, full texture.
White wine
Supplies the main liquid and acidity, carrying the spices and lemon flavour.
Lemons
Provide acidity and aromatic oils from the peel and juice that brighten the drink.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the drink and draws oils from the lemon peel when rubbed on it.

The step that matters

Covering the jug while the mixture stands. Covering the jug keeps the volatile aroma compounds from the spices and lemon peel from escaping, so the infusion keeps its flavour instead of tasting flat.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cardamomfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, sugar, cinnamon, clove, allspice, white wine, 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.

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