Skip to main content
Drink

Port Negus

A hot drink made with port wine, sugar, nutmeg, lime juice, and boiling water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Nutmeg and lime match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 236 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Port Negus

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine port wine, sugar, nutmeg, and lime juice in a bright saucepan.

  2. Add boiling water and heat gently until just below boiling.

  3. Serve hot.

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. Nutmeg + limetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together236 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Port wine + nutmegtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together462 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

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

  4. Port wine + sugartop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together805 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Port wine + limetop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

Sugar and nutmeg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 23,364 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

Port wine
Provides the main liquid and fruity, rich flavour of the drink.
White sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the wine's tartness and the lime juice.
Lime juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet, rich port flavour.
Grated nutmeg
Contributes warm, aromatic spice flavour to the drink.

The step that matters

Heat gently until just below boiling. Boiling drives off alcohol and aroma and can make the wine taste harsh or flat, so heating gently keeps the port's flavour fuller.

Swap the lime

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Limethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against port wine, 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.

You might also like

Wine WheyWine Whey111 recipesRaisin WineRaisin Wine64 recipesEgg WineEgg Wine58 recipesElderberry WineElderberry Wine51 recipes