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Drink

Mulled Wine

Mulled wine is a warm beverage made with spiced water, eggs, sugar, and sweet wine.

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 water

  1. In a bowl, combine boiling water, cinnamon, and cloves. Let steep for 10 minutes, then strain.

Combine and serve

  1. In another bowl, beat the eggs and sugar together until very light.

  2. Stir the spiced water into the egg mixture.

  3. Add the boiling hot sweet wine and mix well.

  4. Pour the mixture several times between pitchers to make it light and foamy.

  5. 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. 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
Beaten eggs add body and a light, foamy texture to the drink.
Sugar
Sweetens the drink and helps the beaten eggs hold their lightness.
Sweet wine
Forms the base of the drink, adding liquid, sweetness and wine flavour.
Cinnamon
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavour to the steeped water.
Cloves
Adds a pungent, aromatic spice flavour to the steeped water.

The step that matters

Adding the hot wine to the egg mixture. Eggs can scramble if they meet very hot liquid too quickly. Stirring the spiced water in first and mixing well helps keep the mixture smooth and foamy.

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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