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Drink

Mulled Wine

A warm beverage made by heating wine with spiced water, egg, sugar, and orange juice, served with toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,662 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Mulled Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mulled wine

  1. Combine the wine and boiling spiced water in a pot.

  2. In a bowl, beat the egg, then mix in the sugar and orange juice.

  3. Stir the egg mixture into the hot liquid.

Serve

  1. Serve hot with toasted bread.

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. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  2. Wine + orangetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Orange + breadtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,084 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

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

Sugar and orange barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 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

Wine
Forms the main liquid base and carries the wine's flavour through the drink.
Spiced water
Adds warm spice flavour and dilutes the wine to a drinkable strength.
Egg
Thickens slightly and adds richness and a silky body as its proteins set in the hot liquid.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the tartness of the wine and juice.
Orange juice
Adds acidity and bright citrus aroma.

The step that matters

Stir the egg mixture into the hot liquid. Egg proteins set when heated, so adding the egg to very hot liquid too quickly, or without stirring, can cook it into lumps instead of a smooth, lightly thickened drink. Stir steadily as it goes in.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against wine, egg, sugar, bread. 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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