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Drink

Mulled Wine

Mulled wine is a spiced hot wine beverage made with cinnamon, cloves, water, eggs, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove 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 Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Make the spiced base

  1. Steep the spices in boiling water for 10 minutes, then strain.

  2. Beat the eggs and sugar together until very light.

  3. Stir the egg mixture into the spiced water.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the hot wine and simmer until it begins to thicken, stirring slowly.

  2. Pour the mixture from one pitcher to another 3-4 times to make it foamy and light.

  3. Serve hot or cold.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Cinnamon + winetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,170 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

  4. Clove + winetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: cis-isoeugenol (clove, spicy).

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Cinnamon and sugar 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

Eggs
Thicken the mixture gently and give it a light, foamy texture when beaten.
Sugar
Sweetens the drink and helps the beaten eggs hold their lightness.
Cinnamon
Adds warm, sweet spice aroma to the infused liquid.
Cloves
Adds pungent, warm spice flavour to the steeped liquid.
Wine
Provides the main liquid, body and alcohol-based flavour of the drink.

The step that matters

Simmering the egg mixture with the wine. Egg proteins thicken when heated but can curdle if the mixture gets too hot or boils. Simmering gently and stirring slowly keeps the drink smooth while it thickens.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Clovethe original
  3. Cardamomfits about as well
  4. Gingerfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against cinnamon, egg, sugar, 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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