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Dessert

To Mull Wine

A wine custard made by mixing grated nutmeg, sugar, egg yolks, and wine, then heating and stirring until thickened.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 24,744 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

To Mull Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Grate half a nutmeg into a pint of wine and sweeten the wine with loaf sugar.

  2. Heat the wine over the fire until it boils, then remove it to cool.

  3. Beat the yolks of four eggs and mix in a little cold wine.

  4. Carefully combine the egg mixture with the hot wine, adding a little at a time.

  5. Pour the mixture back and forth until it looks fine and bright.

  6. Heat it again until hot and slightly thickened, then pour back and forth several times.

Serve

  1. Serve in chocolate cups with lightly toasted bread slices.

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 + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  2. Nutmeg + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together23,364 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  4. Wine + nutmegtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,356 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Wine + sugartop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together9,581 recipes

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

Nutmeg and egg 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the custard and add richness as they set gently with heat.
Wine
Forms the liquid base and gives the custard its flavour.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the wine base to taste.

The step that matters

Heating the egg mixture again. Egg yolks thicken when heated gently but can curdle if they get too hot. Heating only until the custard is hot and slightly thickened, and pouring back and forth to cool it, keeps the texture smooth.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Tarragonfits less well
  4. Gingerfits less well

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