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Drink

Mulled Cider

A warm drink made by boiling cider with cloves, eggs, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 Cider

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cider

  1. Boil the cider and cloves together for 3 minutes.

Make the mulled cider

  1. In a pitcher, combine the eggs and sugar, and beat until very light.

  2. Pour the boiling cider into the egg mixture, stirring rapidly to prevent curdling.

  3. Pour the mixture from one pitcher to another until it is foamy and light.

Serve

  1. Serve hot in glasses, garnished with a little grated nutmeg on top.

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. Cider + clovetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,683 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Egg + nutmegtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Sugar + nutmegtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together23,364 recipes

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

  5. Cider + nutmegtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together884 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

Egg and nutmeg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 24,744 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
Beaten eggs thicken the drink and give it a light, foamy body when poured.
Cider
Provides the main liquid and a mild acidity that gives the drink its tang.
Sugar
Sweetens the drink and helps the beaten eggs hold a light, airy foam.

The step that matters

Pour the boiling cider into the egg mixture. Adding hot liquid to eggs too quickly can cook them unevenly and make them curdle. Stirring rapidly while pouring spreads the heat so the eggs warm gently and stay smooth.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Clovethe original
  4. Cardamomfits about as well

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