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Drink

To Mull Wine

A warm drink made by boiling water, spices, port wine, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

To Mull Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mull

  1. Boil the spices in water until the flavor is extracted.

  2. Add the port wine and sugar, then boil together.

Serve

  1. Serve with toast.

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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Port wine + cinnamontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together241 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

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

Sugar and cinnamon 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

Port wine
Provides the main body and fruity flavor of the drink.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the wine's tartness and spice.
Cinnamon
Contributes warm, sweet aroma as its flavor is drawn into the liquid.
Grated nutmeg
Adds a warm, aromatic spice note that lifts the drink's flavor.

The step that matters

Boil the port and sugar together. Boiling drives off alcohol and volatile aroma compounds, so the wine can lose its fruity character and taste harsh or flat if it boils hard for too long.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Nutmegthe original
  2. Clovefits about as well
  3. Allspicefits less well
  4. Gingerfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against port wine, sugar, cinnamon. 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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