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Drink

Oxford Bishop

A spiced port wine drink made with sugar, lemon zest, lemon juice, cloves, cinnamon, ginger, allspice, mace, water, and port wine.

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

Oxford Bishop

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sugar and spices

  1. Rub the zest of a lemon on the loaf sugar.

  2. Add the lemon juice and spices to the sugar.

Cook and serve

  1. Cook with ½ pint of water for 30 minutes over low heat.

  2. Stir in 1 pint of port wine and heat together.

  3. Serve very hot without straining.

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Cinnamon + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 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

Loaf sugar
Provides sweetness and helps draw the oils out of the lemon zest.
Port wine
Adds body, sweetness and deep fruity flavour to the drink.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet, spiced flavours.
Cloves
Contribute a strong, warm aroma and pungent spiced flavour.

Swap the mace

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

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

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