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Drink

Mulled Grape Juice

A hot spiced drink of grape juice, lemon, orange rind, and spices, topped with a sugar and egg white meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Mulled Grape Juice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Soak the grated rind of the orange in the lemon juice for 15 minutes.

  2. Add boiling water and 1 tablespoon of sugar, stirring until dissolved.

  3. Stir in the grape juice, cloves, and mace.

  4. Bring to a boil and simmer for 10 minutes.

Make the meringue

  1. Boil the remaining sugar and water until it spins a thread.

  2. Pour slowly over the beaten egg whites while beating continuously.

Assemble and serve

  1. Pour the mulled grape juice over the meringue.

  2. Dust with nutmeg.

  3. Serve immediately.

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Orange + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,987 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Whipped with hot syrup to form a light meringue that floats on the juice.
Sugar
Sweetens the juice and, boiled with water, forms the syrup that stabilises the meringue.
Grape juice
Forms the main liquid base and supplies the fruity flavour.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet grape flavour and draws oil from the orange rind.

The step that matters

Pouring the hot syrup into the egg whites. The syrup must reach the thread stage and be poured slowly while beating continuously. Hot syrup cooks the egg white proteins gently, creating a stable foam; pouring too fast or stopping the beating can deflate it or leave it grainy.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (orange, lemon, clove, egg, sugar, grape, nutmeg):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, lemon, clove, egg, sugar, grape, 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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