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Drink

Mulled Fruit Nectar

A spiced fruit nectar made with grape juice, citrus, cloves, cinnamon, and a meringue topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Mulled Fruit Nectar

Ingredients

Directions

Make the punch

  1. Add sugar, lemon juice, orange juice, grated rind, and cherry juice to boiling water.

  2. Let the mixture stand for 15 minutes.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil over a slow fire.

  4. Heat grape juice separately.

  5. When the mixture is boiling, add the grape juice and spices.

  6. Simmer the mixture over a slow fire for 15 minutes.

Make the meringue

  1. Boil 1½ cups sugar and ½ cup water without stirring until it spins a thread.

  2. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  3. Slowly pour the syrup into the beaten egg whites while continuing to beat.

  4. Add the fruit juices to the meringue.

Serve

  1. Pour the mixture into chocolate cups.

  2. Dust the cups with cinnamon or 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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  3. Cinnamon + orangetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Grape + cherrytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together696 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Clove + orangetop 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 into a foam that gives the meringue its light, airy structure.
Sugar
Sweetens the drink and, in the syrup, helps stabilize the beaten egg white foam.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the grape juice.
Grape juice
Provides the main fruit flavor and liquid base of the drink.

The step that matters

Pour the syrup into the whites slowly while beating. The hot sugar syrup cooks the egg white proteins as it is added, setting them into a stable foam. Pouring too fast or stopping to beat can deflate the foam or leave it grainy, so the syrup must be added gradually and the beating kept going.

Swap the grape

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, clove, lemon, cinnamon, orange, cherry, syrup):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Cranberryfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Grapethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, clove, lemon, cinnamon, orange, cherry, syrup. 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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