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Mulled Claret

A spiced wine made by boiling claret with cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon, and other spices, sweetened with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon 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 Claret

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the water with the spices for 10 to 15 minutes.

  2. Dissolve the sugar in the spiced water.

  3. Remove from heat and strain into a pitcher containing the claret.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Nutmeg + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together23,364 recipes

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

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Claret
Forms the main liquid and carries the wine's fruit, tannin and body into the drink.
White sugar
Adds sweetness that softens the wine's tannins and rounds out the spice flavours.
Whole cloves
Contribute a warm, pungent aroma that infuses into the hot liquid.
Cinnamon stick
Adds woody, sweet aroma and warmth as it steeps in the hot liquid.
Grated nutmeg
Adds a warm, aromatic note that complements the other spices.

The step that matters

Take the spiced water off the heat before adding the claret. Boiling wine drives off alcohol and delicate aromas and can make it taste flat. Straining the spices out of hot water and then adding the wine keeps the wine's character intact.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Allspicefits about as well
  2. Clovethe original
  3. Cardamomfits about as well
  4. Gingerfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against nutmeg, sugar, cinnamon. 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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